I had basically two reasons to hate this movie – 1) the animation – I mean need I say more, this is probably the worst “at a glance” looking movie of the century … when Red Riding Hood says at the start, “Your face looks a little weird, gramma,” I almost couldn’t resist the urge to say, “Uh … you’re not looking too hot yourself, Red …” and 2) y’know what? I don’t want to see Little Red Riding Hood all pimped out and updated etc. I like that Little Red Riding Hood is one of the few perfect embodiments of innocence in the world of fiction. The Christina Ricci “caca” version (which I really wish I could find again, any suggestions?) was about as far as I can take it and that was only by virtue of that version’s sheer oddness.

But, anyway, it’s the same old story – I’ve lost count of how many animated movies have looked horrendous to me over the past couple of years before I saw them, and only Barnyard has so far really delivered on the rottenness stakes. This movie is surprisingly watchable, the animation ultimately sits together surprisingly well, and in fact, sometimes some of the textures are pretty damn impressive considering the obvious limitations these guys had. The lighting is pretty nice, too. And that old innocence is definitely there enough for me – Red’s song at the beginning is one beautifully cheesy moment.

Suddenly I feel like I’m excusing the movie, like, “actually it was awful but I just feel so bad kicking it …” but really, that’s not what I mean. This is probably one of the best non Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks animations I’ve seen and at 80 minutes, it’s really not worth complaining about for the way it fills the time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 8:55 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as animation, fairytale. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.