Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Rated: R for gory images, language, and brief nudity
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janseen, Thomas Mann
“Don’t eat the fucking candy.”
You’ve probably noticed the onslaught of ‘darker’ fairy tale movies lately, including SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMEN, JACK THE GIANT SLAYER, and the movie I just came back from seeing HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS. Having not seen the other two, but judging from the trailers alone, the first seems to take itself way, way too seriously. I preferred SNOW WHITE’S competitor, MIRROR, MIRROR because it was a fun, light hearted film that managed to balance both serious moments with it’s comedic overtones.
HANSEL & GRETEL, while not as comedic as MIRROR, MIRROR, seems to take the path of being a movie that doesn’t take itself too serously, either.
As the movie begins, we see young Hansel & Gretel being led into the woods by their father, who leaves them there in the dead of the night. Soon they stumble upon the famed candy house, and… well, if you don’t know how this part of the story ends you’ve probably never heard a fairy tale in your life. But it’s from that point on that we get a radical re-imagining of the fairy tale as told through an animated opening credits sequence, which shows us that after the siblings vanquished the witch, they grew up to become witch hunters, saving children and entire towns along the way. Although thanks to being force fed massive amounts of candy as a child, Hansel has now developed diabetes and has to take insulin shots every few hours.
The siblings are summoned to a small town where the children have been disappearing, and arrive just in time to stop a woman named Mina from being burned at the stake. Hansel soons develops a thing for her, not realizing that she is harboring a secret from them, and the town.
They also meet a young man named Ben, who turns out to be a huge fanboy of the duo. This quickly gets on Hansel’s nerves, as Ben eventually ends up serving as the comic relief of the film. The siblings also very quickly get on the shitlist of the town’s sheriff, who doesn’t take kindly to the strangers stopping his own witchhunts, despite the fact that it’s the man’s own ego that ends up getting most of his men killed early on.
Soon it’s revealed that the grand witch Muriel (Famke Janssen, hamming it up here. The woman obviously knew what kind of movie she signed up for) has lured the duo to the town for the Blood Moon Sabbath, where she reveals the part of Hansel and Gretel’s origin that had been kept for them their whole lives, leading to what can only be described as a blood bath under the blood moon when the siblings take the fight the witches for a final showdown.
Was the movie great? Well, no. I’m not a fan of overly gory movies, and this movie does have it’s fair share of gore. But I did have fun watching it. The acting, while not spectacular, is fun to see play out. Everyone in this movie looked like they were having a good time. Like I mentioned earlier, Famke Janssen really seemed to have a good time playing the grand witch, and Jeremy Renner’s always fun to watch.
So while it wasn’t the greatest movie ever made, it’s still a fun matinee that I recommend if you’ve got nothing else to do on a slow afternoon.
tobiaschristopher 