Pages

I AM...

I am whatever YOU think I am until YOU get to KNOW me. This is true for everyone else too, of course.. so don't make assumptions about anyone or pass judgment; ask questions. You might just make a new friend.

Followers

Monday, January 28, 2013

HANSEL & GRETEL REVIEW



About The Movie:

Abandoned by their father deep in a forest, young Hansel and Gretel enter a gingerbread house and are nabbed by the old witch who resides in it. The witch forces Hansel to continuously eat candy while making Gretel prepare the oven, but the siblings outsmart her and shove her into the fire. Throughout the years after the incident, Hansel and Gretel become ruthless bounty hunters dedicated to exterminating witches. Their work is relatively easy because for an unknown reason, they are immune to spells and curses. Hansel, however, is diabetic as a result of his ordeal and needs to take a regular shot of a medicine every day.

One day, in the town of Augsburg, Hansel and Gretel prevent Sheriff Berringer from executing Mina, a young woman accused of witchcraft. Mayor Englemann has hired the siblings to find and rescue several children abducted by witches. Berringer hires trackers for the same mission, hoping to regain the respect of the Mayor. However, all but one of the party are killed that night by the powerful grand witch Muriel, who sends the surviving member back to the town tavern to explode as a warning to the locals. Hansel and Gretel, with the help of the Mayor's deputy Jackson, capture a witch and interrogate her. They discover that the witches are preparing for the ritual of Blood Moon, which requires sacrificing six boys and six girls, each born on a separate month. Suddenly, Muriel, another witch and the troll, Edward, attack the town and abduct the targeted girl. Gretel is knocked unconscious but is brought to safety by a local boy named Ben, who is aspiring to be a witch hunter himself. Hansel grabs a fleeing witch by her broomstick, but is lost in the forest.

The next morning, Hansel is found by Mina, who takes him to a spring to heal his wounds. Meanwhile, Gretel enters the forest to search for him, but she is assaulted by Berringer and his men for luring the witches to their town. She is rescued when Edward arrives and mutilates the men and mends her injuries. When asked by Gretel why he saved her, Edward answers that trolls serve witches and walks away. Hansel and Gretel reunite at an abandoned cabin, which they discover is not only their childhood home, but also a witch's lair. Muriel appears in front of them, telling them the truth of their past. It is revealed that Hansel and Gretel's mother was a grand white witch named Adrianna, married to a farmer. On the night of the Blood Moon, the heart of a white witch is needed to create a potion that makes witches impervious to fire. As Adrianna was too powerful, Muriel targeted Gretel, who was revealed to be a white witch herself. Muriel spread a rumor across the village about Adrianna. To keep the siblings away from the mob of villagers, their father left them in the forest before he was hanged while their mother was burned at the stake. Following this revelation, the siblings battle Muriel before she stabs Hansel and abducts Gretel for the ceremony.
Hansel wakes up to the sight of Mina, who reveals herself to be a white witch. After Mina uses a spell to bless the siblings' arsenal, Hansel, Mina and Ben head to disrupt the Blood Moon. While Mina mows down dozens of witches with a Gatling gun, Hansel squares off against Muriel's minions and frees the children while Edward defies Muriel's orders and releases Gretel before he is thrown off the cliff by Muriel. With the ceremony ruined, Muriel and the surviving witches attempt to flee, but the witches are killed by traps while Ben shoots Muriel off her broomstick. On her way to meet up with Hansel, Gretel finds Edward and uses her stun gun to defibrillate him back to life. Hansel, Gretel and Mina follow Muriel's trail to the old gingerbread house. During their confrontation, Muriel fatally stabs Mina. The siblings engage in a grueling fight against Muriel inside the gingerbread house until they decapitate her with a shovel. In the end, Hansel and Gretel collect the rest of their reward for rescuing the children before embarking on their next hunt, with Ben and Edward joining them.

What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:

H&G commits the sin of taking itself too seriously … which is to say, it injects even a modicum of seriousness into a premise that begs to high-dive off the deep end of irrationality with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. Far short of being dismissed as a failure, H&G just isn’t as much fun as you’d imagine.

Our leather-clad bounty hunters are extremely busy as of late, for powerful Muriel (Famke Janssen) and a coven of killers are collecting sacrificial lambs for a rare blood moon. Gemma Arterton does what she can to liven the movie’s dour tone, channeling her inner Han Solo to turn Gretel into a stone-cold bitch warrior who practically barks “Ain’t nobody got time for that” as she evades trolls, eviscerates witches and fends off a predatory sheriff played by Peter Stormare. (Because whom else would you hire to play a lecherous sheriff in a movie called Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?) Arterton shows she’s better equipped to play an action lead than the flimsy second banana – where she floundered in Prince of Persia and even Quantum of Solace. Her spunk actually balances out Renner, who does cool instead of charismatic in a misguided effort to push the film toward a legitimacy it doesn’t earn.

Structurally, Gretel neglects to come up with much beyond its concept, which puts a hardened spin on the classic Grimm fairy tale. It’s perfectly natural to want to imagine Hansel and Gretel channeling an inner rage following their near-fatal encounter with a sorceress. But H&G suffers from a saggy midsection as Wirkola figures out how to pad his barely-90-minute film until he can crank up the heat for a Rambo-esque finale. Time-killers range from a love interest for Hansel (played by Pihla Viitala) to a gentle giant named Edward, who befriends Gretel and proves useful when the chips are on the table.

The director, however, is better equipped at ladling out buckets of blood than he is at maintaining suspense or tension. Gretel delivers on the promise of gore, as limbs are torn from bodies and messengers explode after eating combustible worms, spraying tavern patrons with internal organs. The spray of crimson blood cuts through the grim production scheme (no pun intended) and drab visual palette. The movie's often mean and nasty, but that's really its saving grace. “That was awesome,” screams a young Hansel and Gretel groupie after a grisly kill, and you might agree, of that’s your thing.

I’m not saying there isn’t franchise potential here. Never forget, even Clash of the Titans inspired a sequel. Maybe this is the start of a series. We can only hope future installments realize the inherent ludicrousness of the given premise. And at the very least, if H&G finds an audience, expect to see another recognizable figure from stories past hunting werewolves, possibly as early as 2014.

Overall Grade: 

B-

No comments:

Post a Comment