Red Riding Hood [1989]
Ouch. I was kind of cringing before this one even began lol. Let’s just cover the basics – the girl who plays Red is way too old, and just as in the later Randal Kleiser version, considering it’s a musical, well . . . the music sucks (okay, it’s a teeny bit better than the Kleiser version – but I can’t help but compare this one with Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” which had hit Broadway just two years previously). In a way, it’s kind of commendable how they’ve managed to stretch the story out, but I personally can’t think of the audience that would actually care about this point. In the end, it’s basically overstretched (basically, all you need to know is, it takes about an hour for Red to hit the road) – the average child is either gonna be bored out of their mind or old enough to feel insulted by this thing. It does a few interesting things towards the end, regarding the whole eating of Red / cutting open of the wolf dealie … but by then I was really past caring. This, like the Kleiser version, should come packaged with Giacomo Cimini’s horror version of the tale, for balance, lol.