Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

I am not sure what is with Hollywood’s recent fascination of taking children’s fairy tales and adding in swords, guns, blood, and boobs to them but I have to say that I like it! They re imagined the story of Snow White and for some strange reason added in an Australian huntsman who leads an army of soldiers and dwarfs in a quest to kill a blood hungry queen; who just so happens to also take cream baths to help keep her young. It ended up being the sexiest non commercial for Oil of Olay that I have ever seen as Charlize Theron prances around naked for about 10 minutes!  In Hansel and Gretel, they make them witch hunters and give them access to mini guns, sawed off shotguns, and air rifles while the women try and keep their breasts from popping out while they are spraying down evil baby stealers. Hopefully this trend continues with classics like Goldilocks and The Three Bears! They could have Hayden Panettiere play Goldilocks; but in this version they  give her a horny boyfriend who convinces her to rebel against her strict parents by finding the perfect place to consummate their relationship. So they stumble upon the bear’s quaint little home and proceed to do work! Meanwhile the bears come home and each says “Someone’s been banging in my bed! And I don’t even want to begin to think about what they just did with my porridge!” 

I have an even more graphic vision of what they could do with The Three Little Pigs but you get the idea. Pretty soon instead of learning early life lessons about the consequences that come along with being greedy or lazy, our children will be obsessed with guns and strippers and will probably become sexual deviants to boot! Is this good for our future? No, but I am more concerned with my weekly entertainment than I am growing a fleet of perfect young Bradley Coopers to take over the world! 

But back to Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters. MTV Productions (enough said) in the opening scene gives you the classic fairy tale of a brother and sister abandoned in the woods by their father. The next morning they run into a house made of candy and get lured inside where a scary witch awaits to lock them up, fatten them up, and eat them up. Well the kids in a desperate attempt to escape find that they not only have the skills to kill a witch but are also immune to their spells. Years later you see that they have made a successful business of going from town to town destroying witches that wreak havoc on the small communities that cant defend themselves. They eventually stumble upon a town whose children are being stolen from right under them and the locals are beginning to suspect that every woman in the town is a witch. Hansel and Gretel while tracking the witch down find out that there is something bigger that’s in play here and are in a race against time to find her before it’s too late. And that may have been the cheesiest line I have ever written in my life!

Hansel and Gretel are played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton respectively; and maybe it’s because Renner happens to be 15 years older than her in real life but it honestly never really feels like they are twin brother and sister. There’s no real chemistry between them so it comes off feeling more like they are third cousins who just met for the first time at a family reunion. At least in this case it would be ok for them to hook up, well in the state of Kentucky it would be. But you get over this the second you see them break out shot guns and mixed martial arts to beat down witches. I just wished that they didn't try and give them this bored rock star attitude when dealing with the locals. It just comes off as lame and made them seem rigid. Even when Renner hooked up with the cutie good witch Mina (Viitala) it seemed like it was such a chore for him to do so. Oh well at least you got a pleasant surprise in a nude scene here.

The movie never bothers to explain why they have access to guns in this land far far away but because they do, this makes this one of the more violent films that has come out recently. Heads are exploding, bodies cut in half, and evil sheriffs are being stomped to death by giant trolls every 5 minutes. And that is just fine with me! While the plot is ridiculous there’s enough action, blood, and hot women on screen to make you look past that key point. The only complaint I have in regards to the women in this film is that the director thought it would be a good idea to make Famke Janssen look like a cross between Aphex Twin and unisex Marilyn Manson! I know she’s gotten a little up there in age but she’s still a fox. It was pretty comical however that they made her henchmen witches look like Lincoln Park. If you’re gonna go wack, you may as go wack all the way! 

As much as I would like to rate this movie fresh, I couldnt live with myself if I did. This movie is kind of WEAK!