Brought to you by the director of Pirates of the Carribbean 1~4

Or not. Did anybody else hear that in the trailer for Prince of Persia? Up till the end credits, I was certain this was a Gore Verbinski film. Nope, it's Mike Newell. I'd say they had similar styles, though. And the music was eerily similar... just that the Prince of Persia version had less intensity and more mellow. I just looked this up, but it wasn't Hans Zimmer either... Well, whatever.

I understand I'm a bit late for this, considering it came out, like, 1.5 years ago. I really wanted to see it but all of my normal movie buddies (I am so very picky with movie buddies. You won't believe how disruptive people can be these days. Texting during movie with phone placed in cupholder until it vibrates obnoxiously every five minutes? Laughing maniacally at a very good part and then constantly asking me what the actor intends to do and/or what just happened? True stories. No exaggeration whatsoever.) thought it was nerdy and weird. I mean, what else could you say about a movie involving the mystical "Sands of Time," hot main characters, one of which most definitely fakes a British accent (the other I don't know), and the Persian Empire? Exactly.
So I just saw it on Netflix (my best friend) and you know, it wasn't half so bad. I did see Aladdin in there, especially in the market scene at the beginning, and then the end with Jake Gyllenhaal's uncle (Jafar), Jake Gyllenhaal (Aladdin), his princess (Jasmine), and the sand-vortex (the gigantic hour-glass in which Jafar imprisons Jasmine for a minute or so). And I guess also the part when Jake bursts into the room full of girls who giggle at him even though there doesn't seem to be much reason for such behavior. That part's like when Aladdin jumps into the room of three girls and their fat mistress during his opening number. But, you know, at least it wasn't as bad as Avatar with James Cameron. I don't know about you, but I think that film is considered the epitome of plagiarism and predictability. Obviously, I didn't like it very much.
Oh, and by the way, if you were bothered during the movie like I was, the guy playing Jake/Dastan's uncle, yeah, that's the evil guy from Shutter Island. Part of the reason why I didn't trust him from the minute his face came on screen. Anyway, that bothered me for all of the 2 hour duration of this movie. He also reminded me a lot of Scar from Lion King, who isn't even a human being.

But alas! I digress. Other than Jake's accent which sounds ridiculous after having seen Love & Other Drugs and Sourcecode, and excluding occasional awkwardly-placed scenes,  this was a pretty good movie. For example, Jake tore through an avalanche of sand, bumped into a scary emo guy-liner evil priest, and watched his girlfriend gut him... what would be a better time to make out? But otherwise, there was nothing really out of the ordinary—great costumes, though, I noticed. It's almost like if Gladiator was sent back through Hollywood and processed to death in order to meet the demands of the shallow populace. It's still a good movie with a pretty good plot, but it's nothing I haven't seen before, and it has a good amount of gore, platonic romance, Hollywood gloss, archaic mystique, special effects, and exotic scenery to keep me mildly interested. 

Let me just clear this up.

So I came out of this movie (a few months ago, actually) wanting to punch Catherine Hardwicke in the nuts. What the hell was she thinking? Little Red Riding Hood is possibly one of the worst movies I have had to watch during my lifetime. It is definitely up there with The Last Airbender as well as Twilight.
I tried, friends. I really tried to understand the people who thought this was a good movie, but I just do not see what they are talking about.
Let me address a few things I've heard others say. One person said they liked how the pictures were pretty, and that the colors were pretty too. Okay. I understand that—the bright crimson hood against blinding white snow had an intense impact on me. I also understand that the actors were cast according to prettyness as opposed to acting ability, so that must add on as well. I also understand that, in order to increase prettyness, actors had to swab staggering amounts of make up onto their faces, and that these actors also had to wear exotically colorful garments to try and brighten up the scene. And that the set, in order to match the prettyness of the actors, had to be constructed mostly of computer graphics, and this had to be obvious to the audience so that nobody sues them for using a fake place. So yeah, I guess the pictures were real pretty.
But that's really all I can say for this movie, all sarcasm set aside. None of this is believable, none, in any way—people wearing enough make up to match Lady Gaga, two dull (pretty) people fighting over this chick who doesn't really give a shit, the implication that anyone in this movie feels basic human emotions, a celebration feast straight out of a 70s weed rave (including awkward 10-minute dance off), awkwardly and randomly placed  make-out spectacles, the fact that Seyfried can shrug off killing her own father... and what the hell was that thing at the end? Did nobody tell Cathy that you can't have flashbacks if there is nothing to flash back to? Or was it just Little Red fantasizing about her wolf boyfriend? Either way, it was a shitty ending—you can't just be like, so yeah, she's going to wait for him because they love each other, and by the way they had sex THE END.
And I just have to point out a few parts—there was this part when the blonde guy releases Red, and then he yells, "Run!" which apparently triggers the slow-motion. Let me just say, it would have been a good idea if there were bullets raining down on her, or if there was an explosion in the background, or if someone was chasing her.
And then one time, this giant computer-generated wolf killed a few people, and it looked like a bigger version of the wolf from Hoodwinked!
And then the blonde guy, 10 minutes after he becomes an obstacle to Red's relationship with the equivalent of Jacob Black, volunteers to give up without any conflict. Obviously, he was a real tough guy, because when you looked in his eyes, you couldn't even guess that he was heartbroken. He was as tough as a corpse.
And then Amanda Seyfried said something... damn, I can't remember, but you can find it in Twilight.
Before I rupture my spleen, here, I'll start wrapping it up.
I saw that there were a few people telling society to stop linking this movie with Twilight because apparently, they have nothing in common, and because not linking these two together makes Red Riding Hood suck less. I mean, aside from the fact that the director is the same, and the color schemes are the same, and prettyness is still the priority, and the script was horrifying, and the pretty girl had two pretty boys at her feet and never really made a clear decision until the very last minute, and the boys insisted on spitting cheesy lines, and only the visuals were any good... yeah, they're pretty different. I mean, they're set in different time periods, right...?
But seriously, these people are absolutely right. Red Riding Hood should not be an evaluation of a different, eerily similar movie. No—it is a pretty massive piece of shit all by itself. And it should be proud of that.