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rindunel
Reviews
Red Riding Hood (2011)
bad reviews... or NOT
Well I can see that this movie got a lot of bad reviews, a lot of Twilight "spoof" reviews, and a lot of bad criticism. Actually, I can tell you this: it's by far better, wiser, and moodier than the retard reset/retelling of the vampire-werewolf myths found in Twilight. I've read Dracula when I was about 13-14 years old. I've read Frankenstein around the same age. Well, i've been read Little Red Riding Hood when I was 5 or 6 years old, and I remember I bugged my parents a lot about "Why?". Why the wolf went for grandma? Why the woodcutter came along (altough in Romanian translation that was a hunter)? Why did he came to grandma's and why did he found that both Little Red Riding Hood and grandma were in the stomach of the wolf... Why did he put a stone in the stomach of the wolf after cutting him open? Of course, at the time my parents got frustrated by my questioning and sent me to bed letting a lot of lingering questions in my head. Time has passed, and by my college years I got the chance of reading some interesting analysis of Grimm's stories. Murder, cannibalism, etc. are quite consistent throughout their works. And for those who don't know it yet, yes, the Grimm's were not "writers" but merely collectors of old German myths and stories originating in the "dark ages", somewhere between 15th-17th century a.d. Those were not the "Disney" stories children of the '90 grow up with. They were "get spooked" by the tavern/fire stories, they were oral versions altered with each re-telling of myths, unexplained and out of the ordinary fears of the common people: the woodcutters, the farmers, the lowest and poorest of the citizens. The Grimm's didn't collected stories about queens and nobility, and royalty. Actually people used the upper classes characters for some of their myth's (daughter of the king) 'cause they gave a feeling of comfort first (even the richer have problems), but even more important 'cause such persons were out of the reach and possibility of confirmation for most of the auditorium. Anyway, I've seen the so much praised Twilight. Well, it's a movie for brainwashed teenagers. It lacks consistency, it lacks realism and beside it's somehow good music it lacks almost everything. Every second watching it feels like an assault on my intellect. Not judging by the new trend of "daylight vampire walkers" (and yes i saw and enjoyed Blade) I can tell you this: every scene of Twilight it's so much romantically exaggerated that it made me want to puke and comment on the unrealism of every word spoken by the characters/actors. Even "Titanic" is less romantic than Twilight, and after seeing the later I find the first admissible.
Those being told, let's get back to issue at hand. Myths, especially oral myths change with each retelling. And, if from the original (my country, my culture, my myth) Romanian "Flyer" myth, Bram Stroker derived Dracula and the world got the vampire myth, then maybe somewhere around the history my beloved countryman the vampire got the ability to day walk. Watching Little Red Riding Hood was a revelation. It translated the childish story into a coherent "you get your answers" story. It kept the original "script" intact and yet it delivered a mythical creature, that would make it a "spooky by the fire story" people would try to pass on orally when they lack the means to write it down. Wolfs were pretty common in Germany of the 15th century (and feared I might add) and although I am pretty sure the initial happening was of some poor old woman and girl getting eaten by one (or miraculously getting saved) the film was awesome. It delivered. And given the fact that the ulfhednar was an ancient Germanic tribe type of warrior I wouldn't be surprised if initially even the Grimm brothers thought about a werewolf when they collected the story... That's something to take into consideration... The film might just be the most consistent with the initial story retelling and the Grimm's might just got it wrong in the first place.
I give it a 9 of 10. I would go for 8 (due to some cheesy moments and undoubtedly XXI century electrical music) but the "Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in" line just deserves another point.
Thank you for reading.