Amanda Seyfried as Little Red
There’s a case to be made for Hollywood’s being the original green industry: sooner or later they recycle everything. The latest treatment of the Red Riding Hood story is a notable example. You might think that the children’s fable was tamper-proof, but no, in the conference rooms of Studioland, nothing is safe.
In this case, we have an update. The original “Little Red Riding Hood” was a folk tale that found its first printed form in the version offered by the 17th century French author Charles Perrault, entitled “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.” Perrault is known for having virtually invented the fairy tale in its printed form. It was Perrault’s intention to offer moral tales as guideposts for the young.
In Perrault’s version of “Red Riding Hood,” Little Red meets a strange wolf in the woods, and is tricked into telling him the whereabouts of her aged grandmother. The wolf then manages to sneak to the grandmother’s house, evading the notice of nearby woodcutters, and has her for lunch – literally. You know the rest of the story, including one of the best comeback lines in all of children’s literature, “The better to eat you with, my dear!”
In Perrault’s version, however, the story ends with Little Red residing snugly in the wolf’s gastroinstestinal tract. She is not rescued by the heroic young hunter. Where would be the moral instruction in that? Perrault makes his message clear: pretty young girls would do well not to listen to strangers in the woods. Further, there are wolves and there are wolves. While some are obviously dangerous, others seem benign, if not outright charming, and are very likely to talk their way into an unsuspecting girl’s home, where God knows what sort of horrors might ensue.
Gary Oldman
The subtext there, of course, is, “Beware of the charming seducer. He’ll eat you alive!” It’s this element that seems to form a link between the traditional tale and the updated version on offer in the latest film rendition. The picture was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who also helmed “Twilight,” which belongs to the Vampire-romance genre that currently enjoys an unfathomable popularity with pubescent teens.
Well, maybe unfathomable is the wrong word. In fact, the attraction seems obvious. These vampire stories are more about hormones than horror, and teenage girls generally seem to have a weakness for bad boys, especially ones with fangs. The new “Red Riding Hood” offers a well-worn Gothic shtick, with a GCI infusion: Red’s new menace is a shapeshifter (de rigueur for GCI artists), a werewolf. What more could a girl want?
As far as I can tell, the only reasons for an adult to have any interest in this film are two in number: Gary Oldman and Julie Christie. Oldman has a commanding presence in the trailer, with an unwonted patrician accent. (As a character actor, he’s a gifted chameleon, sharing space on a rarefied plane with Philip Seymour Hoffman.) Christie’s presence seems more obscure. In the trailer, we see a fleeting glimpse of a woman of a certain age who looks like someone who used to be Julie Christie, prior to unfortunate surgical interventions. She speaks not a line. I hope she has more to say in the film at full length.
