UK RELEASE DATE - 15th April 2011.

Who’s afraid of the big bad werewolf? Well, if American audiences are anything to go by, not a lot of people. It will doubtless be the same in the UK with this poor excuse for a tween rated fantasy update of a classic folk legend.

Beware all those studios putting into production other genre slants on fairytales like HANSEL & GRETEL, SLEEPING BEAUTY, CINDERELLA et al. Get it wrong like director Catherine Hardwicke has here and the Grimm trend will soon be as dead in the water as a Charlie Sheen stand-up tour. Obviously chosen so she can turn the Red Riding Hood of old into the Bella Swan of SHREK-land, Hardwicke puts her werewolf in TWILIGHT clothing but can’t find any believable middle ground between soapy romance and pantomime camp. Valerie (MAMMA MIA’s Amanda Seyfried looking like she’s about to burst out singing ‘Dancing Queen’ at every turn) is the red-cloaked virgin torn between hunky suitors: moody woodcutter Peter (DEADGIRL’s Shiloh Fernandez) and lovesick blacksmith Henry (Max Irons, son of Jeremy).  Meanwhile her snowy forest village of Daggerhorn comes under tacky CGI cartoon werewolf attack underscored by chart chill-out music. It’s Father Auguste (WITNESS child star Lukas Haas) who calls for Wolf-Finder General Father Solomon (Gary Oldman sporting his DRACULA accent again) to flush out the evil creature. It’s also Solomon who brings out ‘The Crucible’ style witch hunting in David (ORPHAN) Johnson’s lazy patchwork plot turning neighbours against each other in the quest to learn the lycanthrope’s human identity so his silver nail polished fingers can flash into killer action! Yes, you read that correctly - no silver bullets here, obviously too Old School Hammer, so maybe it’s Maybelline. So is the werewolf Edward, I mean Henry, or Jacob, sorry Peter, or is it the most glamorous grandmother in the business Julie Christie, wasting what’s left of her Swinging Sixties icon credibility? No one cares even when the character is unmasked because the will to live is lost the moment Peter has his hair gelled coiffure flattened by the Golden Elephant torture machine.

Pretty to look at – the fairytale design by APOCALYPTO’s Thomas E. Sanders is visually striking – yet pretty banal in medieval high school dialogue terms and TV movie performance levels, there’s no real moment of any note in this toothless attempt at distilling psychosexual subtext from a fable that THE COMPANY OF WOLVES did so much better back in 1984.

Alan Jones.

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