Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Synopsis: “In this spin on the fairy tale, Hansel & Gretel are now bounty hunters who track and kill witches all over the world. As the fabled Blood Moon approaches, the siblings encounter a new form of evil that might hold a secret to their past.” (Rated R; 1 hour 28 minutes)

Did you know that Hansel & Gretel used modern curse words and beat the shit out of witches? I didn’t, but it sure was ridiculous fun finding out! The Brothers Grimm may have been rolling in their graves, but Elizabeth and I were having a grand old time watching this entertaining piece of gory, but lighthearted fluff.

There are certain things you simply need to accept when watching this movie. Even though this is supposedly taking place in fairy-tale land, likely in the Middle Ages, and probably in Germany:

1. Half the people speak in German accents, many sound British, and some more are simply American. Which leads me to…
2. Hansel & Gretel – brother and sister – speak with totally different accents. That’s simply awesome, no explanation given, and none needed if you ask me! (Take THAT Brad Pitt and your lousy British accent in Troy, you were better off not even trying!)
3. As I said earlier, modern speech and slang and especially curse words? Totally in play! In fact many of the key zingers and one-liners were amusing moments of Hansel (Jeremy Renner) dropping the F-bomb and sounding like a modern-day John McClane; although he didn’t actually say, “Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker” he did say, “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” at least a few times…Brothers Grimm, you must be so proud at how your little boy Hansel grew up so strong and crass!
4. Bows & Arrows? Swords? Daggers? Why bother with old-school weaponry when you can settle for shotguns, tasers, grenades and big-ass machine guns? They’re certainly more efficient and that’s what Hansel & Gretel use – yeah!
5. They had insulin. For diabetes. Which Hansel had because of all of the candy he had to eat when he was a child. Nobody else seemed to know or understand what he was injecting himself with, so basically he must have invented insulin on his own. In fact nobody in this world had guns nor insulin but them. They were still using daggers and old-school weaponry like the backwards fools they were. Just accept these things!!!

In case it wasn’t blatantly obvious yet, this is not a movie that’s meant to be taken seriously, nor true to any book. This is simply a really fun matinee of a movie that’s full of silly monster gore, but is honestly more of a comedy than a horror flick. It’s a lighthearted action comedy where the bad guys are ugly witches and the heroes are a good-looking brother/sister combo who are equally good at kicking butt and being famous bounty hunter heroes.

I will say one annoying thing: not once, nor twice, but every single time they’d finally catch up with a witch, tackle her down and put a gun to her head, instead of just pulling the trigger right away, they’d ALWAYS give a long pause and tell the witch to “FREEZE!” and give just enough of a break for the witch to escape as they’d be wildly firing at her. I mean seriously, for the world’s best witch-bounty hunters, they were pretty bad at making the same mistake over and over and over again. Especially considering the fact that they weren’t trying to capture them alive, their purpose was to kill them, so why say “FREEZE” as if they’re under arrest, just pull the damn trigger! But of course then the action scene would end there, so this silly cliche was a necessity.

You can predict most of the movie, but really, who cares? The action is fun, the sets and costumes and effects are all good. I especially liked the troll and honestly couldn’t tell if he was CG or in a big cool costume, and I love that I couldn’t tell. And the acting was silly, fun, and even provided a scenery chewing Peter Stormare, which is never a bad thing.

Sometimes it’s okay to just go have a fun time at a silly movie that never pretends to be smarter than it is, and reassure your brain that you’ll turn it back on when the credits roll.

The movie was better than Red Riding Hood, a silly fairy tale adaptation that decided to be moody and appeal to the Twilight crowd, which unfortunately was about as good as those Twilight movies, missing the fun that this one provided. It was less good than Into The Woods, the fantastic Stephen Sondheim musical which cleverly incorporates many different fairy-tale characters into a hilarious and also very dark show (okay, technically not a movie, but the Broadway show starring Bernadette Peters and many others was filmed for an American Playhouse episode in 1991, and it was so good)!

Quality Rating: B- (It was ridiculous and trite, but it wanted to be. And the technical aspects looked good. I stand by this!)

Boaz Rating: A-