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| Oh, Roxanne, with your 80's name and your yellow color palette. |
I will begin by stating that I watched most of Red Riding Hood last night, in between dinner and after dinner when I was supposed to be socializing with a family friend. Instead I holed myself up in my room and settled into an interesting viewing experience.
Immediately, I was impressed by the Skyrim-esque fantastical setting. The mountains and stuff surrounding the village were gorgeous, and there were expansive landscape shots like the ones in the beginning of the Shining, except with different font and color credits and semi- non creepy music. Then, it goes to Little Red, who's name is Valerie. She lives in a French mountain village that is plagued by a wolf.
Some history on the story, apparently French peasants told it to their children in the 10th century. There were also werewolf trials during the medieval times in addition to witch trials when the Catholic Church was trying to regain control of Europe. That would explain Gary Oldman's character in the movie, who was a Catholic leader of some sort who came to deal with the werewolf problem. Also, on the Gary Oldman subject, he was wearing a very purple outfit, and I didn't think that that color purple was created until the 1800s. I may very well be wrong though, as scarlet could be derived naturally from plants. The blue used for the grandmother's dress was very questionable too, as that color blue was also created in the 1800s. Roxanne's green cape was pretty darn green, too, I might add. It seemed that the pivotal characters were all colorful.
So, onto the original Red Riding Hood story again. In the original medieval versions, the girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her granny. In the old story, the antagonist can be a wolf, ogre, or a werewolf. The wolf usually leaves the grandmother's meat and blood for the girl to eat. In some stories, the wolf eats Red, and in others, she manages to get away. In one of the stories, the wolf is filled with stones which cause him to collapse and die when he wakes up and tries to run away from the woodcutter. Oddly enough, the Charles Perrault version is what introduced the red hood. In the story, written for the French Court of Louis XIV, the protagonist is attractive, and is led into a trap by the wolf, climbs in bed with him, and is promptly eaten. The audience of these tales were frequently entertained by prostitutes in extravagant parties, and the moral of the story was that the gentle wolves are among the most dangerous. I can just see those powdered, white wigged gentlemen chortling and winking at each other with beady narrowed eyes. No wonder the French weren't too fond.
All of these little tidbits are incorporated into the movie, including an awkward 'dance' party scene, which had excruciatingly obvious allusions to the story of the three little pigs. There was also a strange 'wolf' dance that the people did. There was a love triangle between Peter, Valerie, and a fellow named Henry. There was scandal. There was an attempt at the horror genre. There were quite a number of laughs. It didn't come together very well, and I did skip over a few parts due to boredom, but all in all, it wasn't completely horrific. Don't pay for it, though, for god's sakes.
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| The protagonist of this Oscar worthy production. |
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| Amanda Seyfreid attractively tripping on a log. | . |
