All through the marketing campaign for this film I kept my mind open and hopes relatively high. Catherine Hardwicke scolded those who noted the film’s apparent similarities to Twilight, something the trailers and posters played very heavily on, and yet I knew this was a sure fire way of getting people into the cinemas in order, I hoped, to spin us an entertaining yarn based on the enduring fairy tale.
Guess what happened?
It’s Twilight in a red cape with all the subtlety of a wolf bite to the arse, and the emotional complexity of a pantomime dame slipping on a banana skin. I hate reviewing very bad films, and genuinely try to find something positive but the only good note I had was that it looks great, pleasingly side-stepping the Burtonesque shorthand which passes for ‘dark fairy tale’ at the moment. The village and its surrounding landscape gives the right sense of heightened reality with the requisite feeling of isolation. However the film soon falls apart as Hardwicke populates it with a swag bag of clichés and paper thing characters; when Julie Christie and Gary Oldman cannot elevate a film you have problems.
It’s a shame too. Amanda Seyfried, when given more to do than choose between boys, is capable of bringing something complex and seductive to the screen. While Atom Egoyan’s Chloe did often step into a strange self-parodic parallel reality during its running time there were moments when the sexual politics of Seyfried’s titular character were given depth and weight. Not so here, with Wealthy Handsome Mr. Nice going up against Swarthy Handsome (but Poor) Buck for her affections and those pesky Twilight comparisons are back in force . Couple this arid game of attraction with a lame Whodunnit element and you’ve missed the chance to bring a rendition of the fairy tale, with a far greater and complex exploration of female sexuality (which isn’t hard to imagine).
If the true story of how this film came to the screen ever gets told I wonder if Catherine Hardwicke’s original take differed greatly from what we ended up with. In this interview with our own Ben Mortimer she talks of her extensive research opposing the business of making a film and I wonder if her original intentions were stymied by a studio plumbing new depths of audience underestimation on the promise of another Tween friendly hit.
So, less Company of Wolves, more Company of Idiots. It’s an hour and forty minutes of Tell, Not Show with plot points marked out in huge audience friendly exposition. “Your Mother has what she wants…” Swarthy Handsome Buck says to Amanda Seyfried, discussing her arranged nuptials to another, “Money,” he continues just in case we were left in any doubt of the black and white nature of the relationships on offer here. Some of the dialogue, no actually – most of the dialogue would have been laughed out of the South Chuffley Brownies’ annual revue for being too childish. Even Gary Oldman, who could belt out endless stanzas of McGonagall and imbue them with feeling and sincerity, is awash in the hysterical inanity of it all. His warrior preacher had, on paper, a decent stab at actual depth of character with a horrific incident in his past turning him onto his current werewolf-hunting path. Sad it is in the extreme then that he is forced to unveil himself like a pantomime villain drunk on theatrics and the burn of the spotlight.
I have no problem with a simple adaptation of the story, indeed the fact that it has been passed down through generations is precisely because it is so simple – with its instructive and instinctive cautionary tale a mainstay of childhood literature, but to make a dull affair is a waste. It’s so damn bloodless.
[Rating:1/5]
There is an alternative edit with a few ‘steamy’ scenes added in, and I watched this without having seen the film in its original form. It still wasn’t sexy. There’s also a ‘hidden’ extra in which Hardwicke appears to be auditioning an actor – I won’t spoil it save to say that if you’ve bought this Blu-ray then you deserve the punchline this little skit affords you.
