Red Riding Hood (in theaters now)

This review follows from another one you can read here. Red Riding Hood, while based on an old fairytale, is an original screenplay. Catherine Hardwicke, who also directed Twilight and The Nativity Story, directed this movie and offered the screenplay to a friend of hers to make into a book. So, in this case, the screenplay came first, but the book was out before the movie. If you'd like to hear more about the book, see the review mentioned above. However, I think you'll want to stick with the movie, especially since it's the original.

I didn't love the book, but the movie was really well-done. I'm afraid the book colored my view of the movie at first, but I tried to shove the book out of my mind, knowing it was an elaboration on the screenplay; when the movie really started to move, I was able to appreciate it, finally, for itself.

I really enjoyed it. From what I've seen of Hardwicke's films, she loves to create atmosphere. Whatever flaws you can find in Twilight, the movie has awesome music and really creates a feeling in you. The set of Twilight is darkened through special use of lenses, and the setting is beautiful. Hardwicke outdoes herself in Red Riding Hood. The setting is medieval, a little village in the middle of a great forest of thorny trees. It's beautiful and quaint. The beginning shots of the film remind you vividly of Twilight as you zoom over the trees, but then you see castles and villages and waterwheels, and you feel like you've entered another world. So, the setting is perfect.

The music did not disappoint either. There is a party scene in which the drumbeat and horns have a beautiful, eery effect, different from most things you usually hear in mood-setting music. While the music sets up the scenes in this movie, it doesn't just hide in the background. Sometimes you want music to hide, but in this case, it's like another character. I loved it.

Amanda Seyfried does a fine job playing the heroine, Valerie, whose grandmother gives her a red hooded cloak. A few other familiar faces make appearances among the villagers.

The basic plot is this: Valerie is the daughter of the town drunk, a woodcutter. She is engaged to be married to the blacksmith's son; his is the wealthiest family in their village. But she loves a woodcutter like her father, a boy named Peter. Valerie is set to run away with Peter when her sister is murdered by the local werewolf that demands sacrifices from the villagers every full moon. This time, the wolf wants more. The villagers band together to try to kill it, and the local priest calls in reinforcements from a renowned werewolf hunter. Soon, it's revealed that the werewolf lives among them, and the unrest and distrust begin.

In my book review, I compared the atmosphere to that of M. Night's The Village, and while there are minute similarities, Red Riding Hood is not as subtle and has a much richer fairytale feel to it. There's no subtle suspense here as in The Village. All the suspense is in seeing the wolf attack and knowing it will attack again and again.

I liked the end of the movie so much more than I did the end of the book. The book disappointed and didn't actually give any secrets away, but I'm glad it didn't. It allowed me to appreciate and enjoy the movie better without comparing. The movie doesn't leave as much guesswork as the book did. The answers are there, and they make a lot of sense. I won't spoil it for you; that would be cruel. You'll have to enjoy finding the answers for yourself.

Seeing this movie with my husband may have been a mistake. He thought it was well-done but didn't appreciate it as much as I did, trying to find holes in the logic. As we left the theater, I was silently trying to relive and pinpoint just what I liked about the movie while he was telling me the little parts that didn't work for him, things like pacing or logic jumps. We decided that because Hardwicke focuses so much on mood and atmosphere, she doesn't always care as much about minor logistics, which doesn't bother me. For instance, in The Nativity Story, a beam of starlight falls in just the right place to illuminate Mary and baby Jesus. That probably didn't happen in real life, but the movie is creating a scene and establishing a mood. We don't usually go to movies to see real life anyway.

I agree with Nick a little bit about the pacing, some odd jumps between scenes, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but I'm afraid my judgment was a little colored by the book at that point, too. Once the real action began, I didn't find problems with the pacing.

So, if you find yourself interested in this movie and plan on seeing it, here's a little piece of advice. If you have a Twilight hater in your family, don't go with that person unless they really love you and can back down and admit the movie was decent (thank you, Nick). Preferably go with a girlfriend of two. After all, we women tend to think emotionally, and I think Hardwicke has more to offer us than the guys.

I do have one moral disclaimer. There is a hot and steamy scene that looks like it is going to go too far, but it is interrupted just in time, so don't worry. Nothing to cover your eyes at.

Also be prepared for the Church to take a bad rap. I did like the local priest and thought that though he was naive, he was a good man and meant the best for the people.

A few last words on the movie as compared to the book. The book is somewhat boring and delves more than one really wants into the emotions and motivations of the characters. The movie, as movies should be, is must faster and not boring at all. Perhaps you don't get enough of the motivations of the characters, but you can read between the lines.

Finally, I mentioned in my book review that the end was morally ambiguous. I'll try not to be too spoilerish, so this may sound vague. Valerie makes a choice that I don't understand or appreciate in the book. Nothing to do with sex, more to do with throwing caution to the wind and living without caring about consequences. In the movie, the choice she makes is underscored by the answers the book leaves out. So, you understand her better in the movie, and it doesn't feel like she has such a devil-may-care attitude. The motivations are clear, and the choices make sense and feel right. I was very happy with the end.

This is a movie that will have you mesmerized from the beauty of the beginning to the very last dangers. I recommend you leave the book alone and enjoy the movie for what it is!

Four stars for entertainment value and awesome setting, atmosphere, and characters in Red Riding Hood!

Red Riding Hood (the book based on a screenplay)

I will be writing a couple of posts here about movies based on books or, more rare and intriguing, the opposite, as is the case with Red Riding Hood. More on that in a minute.

I am excited to see I Am Number Four, released in theaters tomorrow, because I read the advance reader's copy last year. Last year. Wow. They made that one into a movie fast! It's interesting how excited I am to see this movie when I wasn't particularly thrilled with the book. It was a good enough book, don't get me wrong, but it must not have made a big impact on me because in looking through old reviews, which I wrote before I started this blog, I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore, didn't have one. Sad. Now I will have to see the movie in the hopes that it triggers memories of how I felt about the book. But I am excited to see the movie partly because my memory is foggy and I have hopes that I have forgotten enough of the book to make any adaptations and changes less agonizing and partly because the previews are looking fantastic. I love previews. But enough on that movie/book for now because I will be coming back to it, and on to the book Red Riding Hood, by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright.

Red Riding Hood is a movie, set to release on March 11. Speaking of previews, when I first saw the preview for this one, I was fascinated. It had the feel of M. Night's The Village and the atmosphere and beauty of a Catherine Hardwicke film. (Whatever you think of Twilight, book or movie, Hardwicke made it a lush, beautiful work of cinematography.) In addition to its look, the movie intrigued me for its story; I love fairytale adaptations. So, I marked my calendar with the release date (yes, I do that) and mostly forgot about it.

Until...

Until I found the book at Barnes & Noble (where I browsed and then called Summer to have her order the book from her own store for me). I was surprised to see the book there and then sort of disappointed and excited at the same time. Disappointed that, seemingly, yet another movie adaptation of a book was being created. Can't people come up with original screenplays anymore? Excited that now I would be able to delve more fully into the world I'd caught only mysterious, intriguing glimpses of. I didn't look much at the cover or inside. I was getting the book, no matter what. That's how deep a preview can get its hook into me.

When I finally had my own copy in my hand, I noticed again how the author's name wasn't even on the front cover, just on the binding. Actually, the front cover contained Catherine Hardwicke's name in a little blurb saying she'd written an introduction to the book. I'd found it odd at the time but hadn't given it much thought. Come to find out...this novel is based on the screenplay by David Leslie Johnson, an original screenplay! Well, original enough, since it's a complete re-imagining of the classic fairytale. So, this original screenplay popped up on Hardwicke's desk, and she loved it and decided to give it to a recently graduated, up-and-coming writer friend of hers to transform and flesh out into a more complex story than two hours in the theater can give. So, this is not just a novel copy of the movie, reliving each movie scene, but a separate entity, a story of its own, a rare thing: a book based on a screenplay.

I was torn about whether I should read it before I saw the movie because, really, the movie is the original. If you should read an original book before seeing its movie adaptation, shouldn't you do the opposite if the situation is reversed? But I couldn't wait, so I dove in, and here's my overarching view on this phenomenon: I hope the movie is better. The book was okay, more interesting toward the latter half, but in some ways, it was slow. Movies aren't meant to be slow, and I have high expectations that the movie will move at a better pace because, after all, the movie script was written first, and the author of that didn't have to try to squeeze in a novel's full details. In the end, I might have to say, watch the movie first, and if you are still intrigued, read the book to flesh out the characters. I'm excited to see this movie because I have no fears that it will disappoint. It was created to stand alone, which makes a big difference from book-to-movie adaptations.

Now, if the movie disappoints, it will be because of a lack in the original story itself, and on that, I'm not sure what to expect. I would hate to give away spoilers on this movie, which will be suspenseful and mysterious. Spoilers would ruin the movie-watching experience. But I have to review the book.

So, I will make a concession and review the book as much as possible without spoilers and then revisit the book review in March after I've seen the movie.

Red Riding Hood, as a book, is the story of Valerie, a woodcutter's daughter who lives in a village of fear. It's a small village full of old tradition and law, where women and men's lives intermingle little, where a girl can be promised to a man by her parents, where the Church holds the law, and where an animal sacrifice is made monthly to appease the Werewolf. The people live in stilted homes where they lift the ladders at night and never feel quite safe during the day.

Valerie feels like a stranger in her village of Daggorhorn, even though she's lived there all her life. Her father is the town drunk, but there's more to her feelings of unbelonging. She longs to see the world outside, to live a life without fear, to climb the tallest trees, to be someone special. In short, she feels what many a teenager has felt, stifled, needing to stretch and become someone. But no other teenager in her village seems to feel the way she does. And then Peter returns.

Peter was her childhood friend, until the town ran him and his father off after the death of Henry's mom. And Henry is Valerie's arranged future husband. Henry is sweet and attentive, rich, a prize catch for any girl in the town. But Peter is passionate, and the outsider in him calls to the outsider in Valerie. Typical teenage angst here. 

Honestly, the beginning of the book had me a little bored, not bored enough to quit reading, but disappointed. The writing was a little stilted. Certain phrasing by itself was poetic but was not always put together in a lyrical way. Sometimes it was wordy. Sometimes it wasn't subtle enough, not trusting the reader's ability to put the puzzle pieces together.

But it really picked up toward the middle of the book, which I finished in just two days (and that was only during my son's naps and after he went to bed). You can really begin to see how this story was made to be a movie when you get to the point of nonstop action. I'm thrilled to see these scenes translate to the screen. It definitely has that feeling of M. Night's The Village, and I suspect it will be edge-of-your-seat suspenseful as the murders pile up and the identity of the Wolf is revealed to be a villager, but whom, nobody knows. The end of the book has a very Gothic feel. It's deliciously dark and creepy, mysterious to the final words.

But the very last pages of the book disappointed me again. I have a feeling I know what the author was trying to do, but I hope the movie conveys the idea better. We'll have to see, and I can't say much more without spoiling it for you. Just this, a moral issue, because that's what I deal with primarily on this blog: I was unhappy with the moral ambiguity. I think it adds a haunting feeling to the story, and I can appreciate that. But I thought Valerie's actions and thoughts in the final pages of the book were inconsistent. Expect to hear more on this when I've seen the movie. That review will definitely have spoilers!

In the meantime, enjoy my upcoming review of I Am Number Four as I try to remember the book and compare tellings. I should be seeing it within the next week.