I
have just found my early frontrunner for next year’s Razzies. This script is riddled with clichés, moronic
dialogue, one-dimensional characters and a predictable (not to mention boring)
plot. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters has opted to go with style over
substance. That might’ve been forgivable
except it’s not very good at style either.
The leads Renner and Arterton do okay with what their given but that’s
not saying much. One thing they did do
right was that they were kind enough to make it only 88 minutes. I still think it might have been about 30
minutes too long.
As you might expect Hansel
and Gretel opens with our title characters being abandoned by their father
in the middle of the forest. Soon
afterward, they go inside a nearby gingerbread house owned by an old witch who
of course likes to eat children. After
forcing Hansel to constantly eat candy in an effort to fatten him up before
eating him, the siblings are eventually able to overcome the witch and shove
her into her own oven. Afterwards, they
both decide to become bounty hunters that specialize in killing witches. Eventually Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel
(Gemma Arterton) are hired by the mayor of a town called Augsburg to rescue
some local children that have been abducted by a group of witches led by the
powerful grand witch Muriel (Famke Janssen).
The local sheriff (Peter Stormare) however, is less than thrilled with
their presence in his town and thinks the job should be left to law enforcement
(even though he clearly doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s doing). During their investigation, Hansel and Gretel
discover the children are being used as part of some extremely contrived plot
by the witches to basically take over the world (naturally). Along the way they also find out the truth
about what happened to their parents.
The
biggest failure in this waste of time (and believe me there are many) is the
script. The writers try to put in a few
twist and turns but they’re all so predictable that I was mostly able to figure
it out about 45 minutes in. It also
doesn’t help that every single character is a cardboard cutout. Muriel and the sheriff are over the top,
Hansel has the personality of a dishcloth and while at first they go out of
their way to show how tough Gretel is by the end of it she’s become the poster
child for Dumbass in Distress Disorder. As
for everyone else they are completely devoid of personality or character
development and therefore expendable. Oh
yeah, and now because of all the candy the first witch forced Hansel to eat, he’s
now diabetic (what the hell?!).
As I said before, I would’ve been willing to overlook the
bad script if the action was decent but sadly they don’t seem to be very good
at that either. The action sequences are
dull and badly choreographed, the visual effects are mediocre at best and the
editing is all over the place. If I
wanted to watch garbage like this, I could just watch an original movie on SyFy. They do manage to succeed in being incredibly
(and some might say unnecessarily) gory but again there are plenty of other
suitable (not to mention much better) movies to fit that bill. The only thing really keeping me from giving
this movie an F is that it manages to be mildly entertaining because it’s so
bad it’s unintentionally hilarious.
If you’re looking for a bad movie to make of fun of with
your friends you might find this enjoyable, otherwise I suggest you just skip
it.
Grade: D+
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