Friday, June 14, 2013

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) - Review

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) - Starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, and Famke Janssen. Written and Directed by Tommy Wirkola. Rated R. Available on DVD.


Hansel and Gretel lived up to my expectations. That's not saying much though, since I didn't have high expectations. Hansel and Gretel is a violent, quippy (albeit horrible quips), non-stop action movie that doesn't really require any thinking. If you like similar movies to this (i.e. Van Helsing which also featured an automatic crossbow, if I can remember correctly), you'll enjoy it. I, however, didn't enjoy it. It just wasn't good. The mythology behind the witches seemed inconsistent, but mostly because it was never explained. The two leads did decent enough, delivering quips one minute and then super serious fantasy dialogue the next, but both deserve to be in better movies (and have been). The filmmakers of Hansel and Gretel seemed to be toeing the line between whether this film was supposed to be humorous, almost a parody of this type of movie, or whether it was meant to be serious. This is further made confusing due to the fact that it was produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, the guys behind Anchorman and Talledega Nights. Regardless, it isn't really successful in either one.

And seriously, I hated the fact that it was a fantasy movie set in the past and they had guns. Swords and regular bows and arrows would have still made for cool fight sequences. Throwing the guns in this type of movie just made it cheesy. And maybe that's what they were going for. Who knows?

Rating: 2 out of 5.

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