The Big Picture
Riddle of Fire
is charming but lacks energy as the quest spirals into repetitive encounters.
Beautiful visuals don’t compensate for the film’s lack of adventurous spirit or imaginative spark.
A disappointing end reveals limited imagination, resulting in more exhausting obstacles and only sporadic silliness.
Riddle of Fire is a movie that is never lacking in charm. Unfortunately, charm can only get you so far. A film about kids who ride around on their motorbikes undertaking various quests in Wyoming that increasingly spiral out of control, it is like writer-director Weston Razooli took some of the beats and aesthetics of something like The Lord of the Rings with a dash of TheNeverEnding Story, then injected it into a more modern fairy tale narrative in the tone of something like The Goonies. Wielding paintball guns, these scrappy young kids just want to have ordinary fun on their summer break only to discover the world around them is full of more lightly magical elements. It’s a visually impressive feature debut for Razooli, but that is only one small part of the experience.
Riddle of Fire (2024)
Three mischievous children embark on a woodland odyssey when their mother sends them on an errand.
Release Date March 22, 2024
Director Weston Razooli
Cast Lio Tipton , Charles Halford , Weston Razooli , Lorelei Olivia Mote , Austin Archer , Abigail Sakari , Phoebe Ferro , Charlie Stover
Runtime 113 Minutes
Writers Weston Razooli
This sounds like it could be a winning combination and, for much of the film, it often is. It’s hard to not get swept up in the shenanigans of the kids when we first meet them breaking into a warehouse. The trouble is that the rest of the film following this great opener starts to turn itself in circles, never once proving to be as funny or inventive as it needs to be as it takes us through encounter after encounter that all start to feel the same. While it manages to occasionally find more bold and bonkers moments, the journey to get there starts to wear mighty thin.
What Is ‘Riddle of Fire’ About?
We first meet our central trio of Jodie (Skyler Peters), Alice (Phoebe Ferro), and Hazel (Charlie Stover) when they are undertaking a mission of the utmost importance. Specifically, they are trying to play video games. They hope to pull this off via the warehouse heist where they successfully steal a console that they ferry back home and set up, ready to begin playing. The only trouble? Their television has a parental password on it that they don’t know. When they go pleading to Hazel and Jodie’s mother, Julie (Danielle Hoetmer), who is a bit under the weather, she says that she’ll give it to them if they can get her a specific blueberry pie. This sounds simple though quickly proves to be anything but. First, they must find the person who will make it (turns out they’re also sick), then something cold to help with her illness so she’ll share the recipe, followed by a special speckled egg to make the pie, which is just the beginning. Eventually, they’ll encounter the Enchanted Blade Gang, who have the egg they need and who they will follow into the forest where a sizable portion of the nearly two-hour film will take place. It’s like a basic mumblecore movie with a slightly magical edge.
There is much to appreciate about the general look and feel of the film, though the way it is ultimately assembled never has the spark it needs. Following a group of youths as they take on the adults of the world to pull off a small-scale mission that becomes massive in their eyes is classic stuff, but Riddle of Fire is just never that intriguing in execution. For all the ways the picturesque woods take hold of you in how they are captured, what the characters get up to in them remains both overstretched and oddly inert. The early energy of the opening scene and the initial steps on this journey are soon lost as the film begins to wander.
Some fun gags emerge as being a little bolder, like one of the kids stumbling upon a bottle of alcohol and getting drunk after downing it, though much of it becomes inescapably banal. For an adventure film, it just isn’t ever that adventurous. It’s like the movie is continually waiting to begin, like a perpetual prologue that never builds to its full potential. The introduction of something more fully magical passes just as quickly as it is introduced, playing more as a way for the film to write itself out of a corner than anything else. For a movie that is seemingly meant to be about the boundless potential of imagination and childhood wonder that has made for some great recent works of cinema, Riddle of Fire remains surprisingly defined by its limitations. It still finds moments of fun in fits and starts, though it isn’t enough to make a full meal.
‘Riddle of Fire’ Is Lacking In Magic
Near the end, one of the characters remarks on how they are going to a place that is “full of everything you could ever imagine.” When we arrive there, it is revealed that this imagination is rather limited. Perhaps this is the point where the joys of what we imagine in our youth will eventually crash into the less interesting realities of adulthood, though it is still hard to escape how this feels like a letdown. The film then starts to do a lot of vamping with little punch behind it. When another series of obstacles is created between the youth and their mission, it is more exhausting than exhilarating. Even when it amounts to something that is intended to be playful, it is only occasionally so and is just more sporadically silly.
When it then uses the song from Cannibal Holocaust to close, somehow against all odds, it just made me want to watch that gruesome movie instead. This one just felt disappointing after the long journey. While the title promises fire, the only riddle remaining is where the adventure it was searching for ended up disappearing to.
Riddle of Fire (2024)
REVIEW
Riddle of Fire has plenty of charm initially, but it begins to wear thin the longer it goes on.
ProsThere is much to appreciate about the general look and feel of the film.The lightly magical elements are potentially intriguing when brought into the film. ConsThe way everything is assembled proves to be lacking in spark.While supposedly about childhood wonder, the film is surprisingly defined by its limitations.As it throws more obstacles in, this proves to be more exhausting than exhilarating.
Riddle of Fire is in theaters in the U.S. now. Click below for showtimes.
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