User reviews

Just returned from a nearly sold out theater and I must say the film was somewhere between decent and good!

I've read quite a few reviews here and was truly surprised about the supremely negative feedback. "The Grimm brothers would roll in their graves," someone wrote. My response to that is: "Really, would they now?" I believe a bit of research on the subject would do some quite a bit of good. The brothers Grimm -which weren't the original story tellers of 'Rotkaeppchen' as they called it- told folktales, not fairy tales…they were the very first tabloid writers and although their stories all had a grain of truth at the very core, the brothers wrote them to feed into peoples believes, superstitions and prejudice in central Europe in the 1800…their tales were often capricious and usually cruel, showing very little moral. It took generations of translations and retelling to soften the originals enough to be considered bedtime stories because the originals would have provoked nightmares in grown man at their time. Does anyone know what the significance is of the name Peter and why he wears black throughout the entire film?? I'd love to read your ideas about that. The film is a nice translation…yet another one. And by far closer based on the Grimm brothers vision than the stories we all were told as kids. I did see a bit of parallel to Twilight but only because both, this film and all the Twilight movies were filmed in Vancouver and surely used the same scenery. The Storyline is based on the folktale and (in my opinion) it has been done rather well.

Has it become increasingly difficult to write an ending? Have writers suddenly forgotten that the climax is the high point of a story? Or is Hollywood getting lazy? Red Riding Hood is probably the most frustrating and unsatisfying movie I've been to, and the above reason is just one of many. While it certainly isn't bad, I haven't finished feeling so let down since Haneke's "The White Ribbon".

Of course, Hardwicke is a director who is willing take big risks. She did so with Twilight, which was a huge smash with teens everywhere. And she does have a good eye for a shot, and several scenes here show. If had to recommend the movie for one thing alone, it would be for the visuals. The look of the film has a gorgeous, lush and colourful palette that made this film worth seeing on the big screen.

The film's biggest problem aside from being anti-climatic is that the plot is just... a mangled mess. It reads like a really bad fanfiction. If you thought Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland was bad... .wait till you get a load of this movie. We have several plot points that come in and suddenly are left do die, one of which includes Father Solomon played by Gary Oldman, who is made to be a crazy bastard type character, and we don't see anything to prove it. To top it all off, it's rife with clichés, like the obligatory love triangle, the whodunit, damned protagonist.

The actors are a mixed bag. Seyfried does a good job here and has plenty of emotion in her performance. She has plenty of cheesy lines but she does a good job for what she has to work with. Gary Oldman was also great, but that was expected as he always shines with every performance. On the downside, Shiloh Fernandez gives one of the worst performances ever here. He spends the whole movie looking like he wants to punch someone and reads his lines like he's reading them off a paper. And Virginia Madsen just awful here as well, and is over-acting Billy Burke In short Red Riding Hood is a film that has plenty of promise, but sadly doesn't live up to it. It isn't a bad film by any means, but you are most likely to leave disappointed.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to see this movie. I am not a fan of the Twilight movies(the first of which Catherine Hardwicke also directed) and it didn't look like my kind of film. But I saw it for the wonderful Gary Oldman.

I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much. Red Riding Hood(not the fairytale by the way) does try hard to be a lot of things, including introducing a number of horror, fantasy and mystery elements. But due to the sluggish pace and disjointed story structure(that is full of overlong filler, particularly the celebration scene, and the dream sequence was very awkwardly placed) the film fails at pretty much all these elements.

The script is very clunky, underdeveloped and banal as well. A lot of it did not keep my attention and I found myself chuckling into my coke at any unintentionally funny bits. The CGI is quite poor here, with the wolf looking as though it was done in a hurry. Hardwicke's direction never rises above mediocre, the editing is unfocused and frenzied and the three titular characters are incredibly dull and uninteresting with the romantic elements between them poorly written and directed.

The acting doesn't fare much better. Amanda Seyfried is pretty but bland in the title role and shows little or no chemistry with her co-stars, while Max Irons(son of Jeremy), Lukas Haas and Shiloh Fernandez show good looks but awkward line delivery. Virginia Madsen and Billy Burke are both wasted, both over-doing it in a valiant attempt to elevate their weak material(these two actors probably had the worst of the dialogue next to the leads actually). And the climax is little more than a mangled mess and devoid of depth.

Despite these many cons, there are some decent assets. The score is atmospheric enough and the costume and set design are spot on. Plus there are two good performances, Gary Oldman and Julie Christie. Oldman does chew the scenery, but he looks as though he's having a ball, while Christie is very enchanting.

Overall, not terrible, but deeply flawed and over-ambitious. 4/10 Bethany Cox

You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of a film ruined by trying to be too many things to too many people than Red Riding Hood, which opens Friday and, by all rights, should close Saturday.

The most obvious audience Hood hopes to attract is fans of the Twilight film series, snagging the director of the first film, Catherine Hardwicke, and refashioning the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale into, in a remarkably halfhearted way, a love triangle between three extraordinarily uninteresting characters. (If all three had been eaten by the wolf in the first act, we might have been onto something.)

What's weird about Hood, which inexplicably counts Leonardo DiCaprio as one of its producers (stick to swimming in icy water, Leo), is that this romantic angle is not its main thrust. It doesn't have a main thrust.

In fact, for a supposedly sexier take on a classic folk tale, it's in desperate need of thrust in general.

It flits around the idea of being a more adult folk tale but never commits. It throws in a bit of (pretty bad) CGI werewolf attack action from time to time, but it's nowhere near violent or bloody enough (it's PG-13) to interest action or horror fans. It has moments of campy fun, specifically every second Gary Oldman appears as a sinister Cardinal Richelieu-type character, but other scenes are played ridiculously straight.

Perhaps the film's biggest mistake — and that's saying something — is structuring itself like a Scream film. The Big Bad Wolf is indeed a werewolf, and our sweet little Red (named Valerie, played by Amanda Seyfried) has to figure out which of her fellow villagers turns into a beast when the moon is full. Is it her forbidden love, the dull as dishwater Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), who presumably equates to the hunter of the folk tale? Or is it the man she's been arranged to marry, the somehow even duller Henry (Max Irons)? Or is it one the other remarkably dull villagers? And given how dull Valerie is, who the hell really cares?

On looks alone, Seyfried perhaps is perfectly cast as Red, considering Christina Ricci might be a bit too old for the role. Seyfried's pristine, alabaster skin and enormous eyes give Red just the right look, but every time she opens her mouth you're begging for that werewolf to put her out of our misery.

To be fair, no actor could be expected to excel given the cheesy dialogue and Hardwicke's uninspired direction; solid veterans such as Virginia Madsen, Julie Christie and Lukas Haas struggle to make an impression, with Christie holding up the best. As Red's father, Billy Burke seems more zoned out than James Franco at the Oscars, suggesting he's only here for one more Twilight connection.

Only Oldman acquits himself well, simply because he treats the film as the campfest it should have been from the opening credits. He's acting in an entirely different movie, a Sam Raimi romp like Army of Darkness or Drag Me to Hell, and Red Riding Hood briefly becomes almost fun during Oldman's most animated scenes.

The film doesn't even look that great in a technical sense: The exteriors look fake, all clearly shot on soundstages, and not fake in an intentional "this is a dreamy heightened reality, because this is a folk tale" way. They look fake in a "we really suck at our jobs" way.

Red Riding Hood is pretending to be a darker, more adult take on the folk tale, but it's hardly the first: Neil Jordan mined the territory in 1984 with the R-rated The Company of Wolves, focusing more on sexual metaphors and heavy werewolf action. It wasn't great, but at least it knew what it wanted to be. Red Riding Hood tries to be a little bit of everything, but ultimately it succeeds only in being a tedious mess.

Is this movie corny? Yes. Are there cliches? Of course. Is it also entertaining, sexy, and fun? 100%. I watched this movie in late high school and now in my mid-20s I still love it. It's a dark take on a classic fairy tale and is entertaining all the way through. The twist in the end took me by surprise, but I am someone who hardly ever sees twists coming, so take that with a grain of salt. This movie is worth a watch. It's not a masterpiece but it is enjoyable if you don't expect anything earth shattering from it.

This certainly isn't the best werewolf movie you're ever going to come across (not by a longshot) but I thought it was better than you'd imagine from some of the responses the movie is getting. It's very loosely based on the old folktale of Little Red Riding Hood (which, by the way, goes back far into European history long before the now famous version by the Brothers Grimm; the first print edition of the tale dating to the late 17th century) and it also has one scene (really just one line) that for some reason chooses to pay homage to the story of The Three Little Pigs ("I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down" cries out one young man as others fall down around him.) Although you can't avoid those connections (and are probably intended to make the connection) it's probably best that you try not to, and watch the story in its own right.

It's the story of a small village that has arranged a truce of sorts with a local werewolf. Every full moon, they put out livestock for the beast to devour and in return the beast leaves the people alone. For some reason, though, the beast breaks the pact and people begin to die. The mystery revolves around the identity of the werewolf, once a werewolf-hunting priest (Gary Oldman) shows up in town and warns the people that the werewolf is one of them. The question becomes "who is it?" and the mystery is pretty decent. There are any number of reasons to suspect any number of people of being the beast, and the ultimate revelation of the werewolf's identity surprised me a bit - it was not my first choice.

I thought director Catherine Hardwicke made pretty good use of the setting of a small, isolated town deep in the mountains, and Amanda Seyfried was excellent in the role of Valerie (the Red Riding Hood character.) The movie also provides a pretty good depiction of paranoia and the ultimate consequences that paranoia can have, even (and perhaps especially) on people who know each other as well as the residents of this town obviously did.

This isn't really (in my opinion at least) a horror movie. It's more of a mystery, and as a mystery I thought it worked pretty well. I certainly think it deserves to be rated more highly than it is. (7/10)

Amanda Seyfried plays Valerie, a young girl in a village fearful of an ungodly werewolf that has been terrorizing them for twenty years. Its latest victim is Valerie's sister. So to solve the mystery of who the werewolf is, as well as to kill the creature, they seek the help of a religious priest (Played by Gary Oldman), a man experienced in the killing of a wolf. One night, the wolf attacks, but Valerie discovers that... she can talk... to the... wolf...

zzzz...

zzzz...

What? Oh, sorry. I guess I'm as bored summarizing the plot of the movie as I was watching the actual movie.

First of all, Amanda Seyfried makes an attractive fit for the role of Valerie, and the production design of the film is interesting, but that's as close to complimentary as I'm going with this movie.

Director Catherine Hardwicke really has trouble keeping an even sense of rhythm, and the cast is a serious disappointment. Gary Oldman hams up the scene, while Julie Christie is sadly exploited for her willingness to stand around and do nothing. The leading men of Valerie have the personalities of water and sandpaper, while Billy Burke and Virginia Madsen can't make anything out of their roles. They do bad jobs, but it isn't all their fault. I know I'D have trouble trying to do a half decent job with this kind of writing.

The screenplay is awful beyond comprehension. Full of contrivances, unbearable dialogue, and a needless sense of piling on characters, and twists and turns until the final product is a total WTF of lame explanations. I wouldn't be surprised if someone fell asleep watching the movie, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they woke right up. The movie, with it's musical thumps and white noise, is near as loud as a rock concert... and I never could understand why they felt the need to play alt. rock music during a period piece.

In short: One or two bright spots - bland acting ridiculous screenplay off pacing = Terrible.

Red Riding Hood = * out of ****

I let my friends talk me into seeing this film with them because I think Amanda Seyfried is adorable and I had high hopes that this supposedly adult re-imagining of a children's folk tale would be entertaining in the same aspect of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow...how disappointed I was.

The acting was so corny and so ridiculous although I can't help but feel that it's not entirely the fault of the actors, but the director. The dialogue was so incredibly cheesy that at several points throughout the movie, groans were heard throughout the audience. Visually, the film is beautiful but the plot is choppy, the romance scenes are cringe worthy, everything about this film was just painful. Shiloh whatever his name is has a constant sneer/smirk on his face that makes his character so annoying. And the other love interest was just plain dull. Seyfried is a perfect Red Riding Hood but she brings nothing to the film other than her constantly doe eyed, surprised expression.

Do not waste your money on this crap.

Catherine Hardwicke, that name alone gave me the creeps years ago. She offended the horror genre with the so much acclaimed but also hated Twilight saga. I hated it too and was afraid to watch Red Riding Hood. But I gave it a change due Amanda Seyfried which I've seen in the also hated Jennifer's Body but for me she did well, and I must say, I have seen her in Mamma Mia and she acted extremely good in that too. Further on mister Dracula (for the new generation) Gary Oldman was in it too and I like him too as an actor. But I can understand that people will hate Red Riding Hood. It's in the kind of Van Helsing and Wolf Man (the new one with Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro). in which I mean the use of CGI of the main creatures. Here we have the story of a normal girl falling in love with, well, you will see. Of course I couldn't watch it without comparing it with Twilight. Much better this is, there is some kind of atmosphere all over it done with color grading. There is a lot of CGI used for making the woods creepy but it worked out fine. It really looked like a fairy tale. And the most famous words of the fairy tale are in it, you know, grandma what big....It can be watched by teens because no gore or almost no blood is seen in this flick. Killings are off screen and you don't see knifes or swords going in the flesh. I liked it, even as a horror aficionado.

The plot of Catherine Hardwicke's "Red Riding Hood" revolves around a series of massacres and a pressing question. The said massacres being caused by a werewolf and the said question being who the wolf is. But as I watched it, the question that kept on running through my mind was not who the wolf was, but rather who cares who the wolf was? This is a very flabby-footed, self-delusional mess of a movie that succeeds in making even the great Gary Oldman look as unnatural in his performance as Steven Seagal.

"Red Riding Hood" suffers from a poorly-constructed screenplay, one that seems was written within a handful of days and not given a single second of revision. The writer, David Johnson, was a production assistant on Frank Darabont's masterpiece "The Shawshank Redemption" but his talents seem to be more focused on polishing up a movie rather than spinning up a story. The plot of "Red Riding Hood" is contrived, flat, and lacking any zest. In fact, even though the denouement has great potential to be a real shocker and (I'll be honest) caught me by surprise, it was handled and executed so sloppily and the writing that summarizes it all up was so flimsy and manipulative, that it registered no impact on me whatsoever.

There are no characters worth caring about and next to nothing in terms of acting. The titular character is played by an up-and-coming starlet by the name of Amanda Seyfried, although if all of her performances are as uncharismatic and dull as this one, I cannot imagine why. In this performance, at least, she did not strike me as being a natural actress. Then again, she has nothing to work with in Mr. Johnson's screenplay. She also has two romantic interests, one played by Max Irons and the other by a wooden-faced Shiloh Fernandez. They are just as boring as their characters. They have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever with Miss Seyfried; I never felt any passion. Even Gary Oldman, so good so many times before, is awful here, hamming up and chewing apart every scene that he is in. His introductory moment, where he explains his experiences with werewolves, is handled by him in a way that is so over-the-top, almost like a really bad vaudeville performance. It's hard to believe that this is the same actor from "The Dark Knight," "The Book of Eli," and the Harry Potter movies.

If there is one good performance at all it is by Julie Christie, who is just as magnetic and wonderful as she was when she graced the screen in David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" forty-six years ago. She has a powerful star presence and quality that allows her to overcome even the trashy dialogue and nothingness that she was supplied.

Another strike against the movie is the apparent lack of experience by its director, Catherine Hardwicke. She was a production designer before this movie (she designed the wonderful town reconstruction for "Tombstone" in 1993) but her skills with a motion picture camera are next to nothing. She doesn't seem to even know the basics about misc en scene and how to structure a sequence. Not even enough to know that a moment where Mr. Oldman gives a last minute warning to a stubborn old villager about the impending threat of the werewolf that she should have had a reverse angle to show the villager's reaction; instead she chooses to stick to the back of his head. There is no steady flow of images here, with too many medium and long shots and close-ups so claustrophobic that they enter the territory of being loony. One scene that was directed particularly badly was a laughable love moment between Miss Seyfriend and Mr. Fernandez. There is a problem with a romantic moment where the sight of two people making love is neither heart-warming, nor, obviously, erotic.

But Miss Hardwicke did coordinate well with her production designer, for the sets are quite good. And the special effects are decent enough in and of themselves. The werewolf, computer-generated of course, are much better than the cartoony wolves I saw in "Season of the Witch" earlier this year. It's only a shame that that wolf was not on-screen more.

"Red Riding Hood" has a feel of so many medieval melodramas of recent years: half-hearted and flimsy. It is also crippled by that haunting feeling that even the people who made the movie would not even want to see it. It feels like an assignment done by people hopelessly unhappy in their work, who just wanted to get through the dailies so they could go home and relax before getting up to do the same thing again the next day.

I have never written a review before, nor have cared enough to look and read through reviews in the first place. However, I do have something to say about this movie, and the reviewers who think their opinions are worth listening to.

In my case, I go in to watch movies on non-biased terms. Meaning, I do not go in with any pretenses or theories jaded by others speculation. I go in to watch what the movie is offering, and interpret it in to my own fashion, seeing as every one will have their own opinions. So, I did the exact same prep with this film. I bought my ticket, sat in my seat, didn't think twice about what I was about to see, and just watched.

I loved Red Riding Hood. I thought it was beautiful, it was subtle and sexy- especially with the knock out soundtrack- and, most importantly, I went on a journey with the film. It kept me hooked, and although there were a few silly moments or corny lines, I still found myself lost in the mystery and the unknowing of the film. All movies will have their faults, or what I like to call, inflections. One, for me, was wanting to see a more developed character of Valerie and her family. I would have enjoyed seeing a relationship between her and her sister before Lucie was killed and where to story we saw began, as I would have understood her pain on the same level. As well, I would have liked to have seem more about her Grandmother and the way she lived at the same age as Valerie growing up with the Wolf and its legend. To me, that would have made the film a whole and the storyline would have become more dynamic. But, seeing as they wanted to have this film out in theatres and not as a mini series, I think what they put in the film fit wonderfully with the time gap of the audience's attention.

Now, it is one thing to review a movie on it's pros and cons and to point out where the plot failed or the story line succeeded. However, it is another thing to write a review comparing it to a movie with the same director and showing the apparent similarities. Yes, I am talking about all you reviewers who only had one thing to say: Twilight. I have seen Twilight, I have painfully endured Twilight, and I dismissed Twilight. Twilight has a flawed script and storyline, and I personally believe the only good Twilight was the first Twilight, as Catherine was able to draw the attention away from the story line with the visuals, the camera angles, etc. To try and accuse Red Riding Hood of being a "Twilight clone" is absurd. If you were to compare anything to Twilight, I'm sure you would find some similarities. It's what makes movies Movies. All movies follow the same structure. There will always be conflict, there will always be a climax, and there will always be a resolution. If you know Red Riding Hood, the actual story, not the censored picture book you were read as a child, then you would know that the censored version is a simple, straight forward idea. The Brothers Grimm tale is however, what you SHOULD be comparing this film to. And, I believe the director, the camera crew, the actors, etc all played in to this old, twisted fairy tale we all think we know and did a very good job of it.

All in all, Red Riding Hood did what it was supposed to. Entertain, and keep you on the edge of your seat. It's beautiful, it is gracious and it is well adapted.

Now, go and read the Brothers Grimm tale!

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) lives in a village in the deep dark forest. Her village is terrorized by a big bad wolf which the villagers appease by killing their best livestock. By one day, the wolf kills Valerie's sister. Even though she is in love with woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), her parents arranged a marriage to the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) arrives to kill the werewolf informing the villagers that the wolf can take human form by day.

Amanda Seyfried is amazing as usual, but the boys are just boys. They aren't up to the task of acting opposite to Amanda. That's one of the reason that the planned love triangle doesn't quite work. The boys are so 2 dimensional and forgettable, they might as well be cardboard. Gary Oldman does add a good menacing character. The artificial set looks interesting at first, but it does get tiresome especially so much of the action takes place in the dark. Even in the daylight, it feels dreary. The movie just never picked up the pace. It's all menace and atmosphere. The only two compelling actors are Seyfried and Oldman.

I went to the cinema today with two good friends to see this film. I had seen the trailer and got worked up that this would be a good film. However, it is not as good as it could have been. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy some of the film. Amanda Seyfried, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons and the excellent Gary Oldman acted brilliantly in the film, and the effects for the Werewolf were pretty fantastic as well. However, the rest of the cast let this film down and although it is classed as a "horror" movie, there is only really one jump-worthy moment. I don't want to give away the secret of the wolf, but if you listen closely, you can easily tell who it is...

There is a bit of gore, but if you are into some of the supernatural stuff (especially Twilight, even though I'm not a fan), you should give it a shot and might like this... but horror-lovers, keep well away, you might end up feeling a bit ripped-off...

Red Riding Hood is like a mix of Twilight and Gary Oldman villainy. There's a young adult naive romance to it and then it takes a turn into 1600s-1700s psychosis and witch paranoia, blood and torture. And then it goes back again.

It's a fascinating mix of genres that honestly I did enjoy. There's potential in the film and I wish that it did just have that extra finesse to make it more of a timeless film. The attempt to twist the little red riding hood tale into something different was commendable, but sometimes veered too far into teen fiction territory.

Part of the reason for my low rating is that the final unveiling of who the wolf is didn't quite ring true as the clues didn't line up in a satisfactory way. And also some of the actions the wolf did which were uncovered at the end seemed unnecessary.

Props to Gary Oldman for his scenes and being a hateful fear mongerer.

Bonus trivia one of the actors from Twilight is actually in the film, Charlie, Bella's dad from the story.

This film is a steaming pile of cinematic poop. It's dreadful in every single way. There's not one nice thing I can muster to say about it. It makes the Twilight series, which it so blatantly and unashamedly mimics, look positively brilliant. I can understand the logic from Warner Bros; in a time where Edward Cullen and Bella Swan rule the roost, why wouldn't you want to get in for your share of the pie. I'm sure it will reap the rewards at the box office thanks to the universal lack of taste teenage girls have in picking fads. That doesn't stop it being the worst movie of recent years.

It all begins with the downright hilarious dialogue. In a film rife with atrocities, this stands tall as the most dreadful of the lot. I almost feel sympathy towards the actors as no-one, and I mean no-one, could make some of those clunkers work. Trite clichés such as "I don't want you to see me like this" (complete with sooky head turn) and "I'll do anything to be with you" (barf) rear their ugly head throughout. Even the attempted humour, mainly from Julie Christie's Grandmother, falls flat thanks to some lamely scripted jokes. Hardwicke does what she can to emulate her Twilight success, but her regurgitating attempts at hitting gold twice is boring, lazy and worthy of the regret she'll feel at the end of her career looking back.

Youngsters Seyfried, Fernandez and Irons can be forgiven for signing on as I'm sure they all had grand illusions of being the next Bella, Edward of Jacob. I can even give Burke and Haas a pass as they're not exactly thespians of a standard where they can be too fussy with their roles. What I can't figure out though, is what in the hell is Gary Oldman doing here? An actor who has produced so many memorable characters and starred in so many fantastic films, Hardwicke must've beaten a drunken Oldman in a game of poker to get him to appear in this garbage. Surely he didn't select this role whilst of a sane and sober mind. Hopefully for him his upcoming Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Dark Knight Rises wash away all memory of Red Riding.

Pathetic.

1 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Average, 3 - Good, 4 - Great, 5 - Brilliant)

I absolutely loved this movie. I have seen it several times. The work they performed on the computerized wolf is outstanding. The cast is excellent and the story is horror and Gothic at it's best. The music score on this film is goth, haunting, and awesome. This movie may not be for all, but for a werewolf thriller, it is one of my all time favorites. It takes an old story and puts a different twist. Imagine a story which seems to be set in an old Transylvania village put to upbeat music and a very romantic story line. I know it has had some bad reviews, personally it is a love/horror/werewolf thriller that is a winner to me. Red Riding Hood is worth watching and then some.

There is very little to like in Catherine Hardwicke's latest offering. She does have a good casting concept, however, with Julie Christie, Virginia Madsen and Amanda Seyfried as three generations of the same family. There is a distinct resemblance among them. But this marvelous potential is pretty much wasted. Gary Oldman carries his weight well as Father Solomon, a priest with colorful trappings who comes to the village to destroy the werewolf who threatens it. Billy Burke is very interesting to look at as the title character's father but he too is given little to do. Seyfried and her romantic leads (Shiloh Fernandez and Max Irons, who looks and sounds nothing like his famous father Jeremy) get to look pretty and add another notch to their youthful resumes. There is no suspense at all despite the formality of medieval villagers fearfully wondering who among them is a wolfman in disguise. It's all very similar to another bloated, boring, CGI-dependent medieval fantasy from the 90's: "Dragonheart," which also featured Julie Christie in a matriarchal context, wearing flowing garments. The camera swoops down and jiggles through the cotton candy gingerbread house-style set to the accompaniment of the usual synthesized swooshes, inducing yawn after yawn, kind of like leafing through a perfumed issue of Vanity Fair while you're waiting to get your teeth cleaned. Movies are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the overpriced candy bars sold in the lobbies of the soulless venues in which they are shown.