Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Sarah and I have a very specific set of personal biases to get out of the way:
1. Jeremy Renner
2. Jeremy Renner's ass

That being stated, we're fairly certain we're about to embark on the classic tales of "You're Hot, But Not Hot Enough to Excuse This" and "You're An Oscar Nominee, Why Are You Here?"

 

Directed by: Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, and Norwegian movies we can't pronounce)

Starring: Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton

Plot Summary: "I feel like we're super prepared for life, because we would never in a million years approach the 'free candy' van. And these kids never heard their own story to know the proper decision."

Yes, Renner and Arterton play the grown-up Hansel and Gretel from ye olde "Don't Take Candy From Strangers" fairytale, who famously hunt witches across the European(?) countryside to ensure no one else has to deal with that mess. But, hark! Something extra sinister is afoot! Children keep disappearing mysteriously, and all signs point to witchcraft, so it's up to Hansel and Gretel and their anachronistically complex weapons to save everyone. Evil Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) is trying to devour hearts in order to keep herself and her witch sisters invulnerable to human methods of killing them (fire), which would, of course, change the whole game. The kicker is that there's only one more heart they need for the ritual, one specific heart, which happens to belong to our dear Gretel. By the way, after being force-gorged on candy in the witch's cottage as a child, Hansel has developed diabetes -- the "sugar sickness" as they refer to it here -- and shoots himself up with insulin on the regular.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"We're eight minutes in, and I already know this is going to be another edition of 'When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors.'"
--"Are we pretending to be in Germany? Is that what's up?" / "Gretel just said, 'I'll blow your sheriff's brains all over these f***in' hillibillies,' this cannot be Germany."
--"Of course that girl's not a witch. Real witches would've f***ed them up by now."
--"SHE HAS AN AUTOMATIC CROSSBOW!?"
--"Shillings? Is this England? Where are they?"
--"Someone needs to be punished for this movie."
--"Is your sugar low, sweetheart? Hansel, eat something! You need food with your shot!" / "He's gonna lose a leg, or at least a toe."
--"From what I figure, the real downfall for everyone is that there are no brains in the H&G company."
--"Gretel needs to learn to shoot bitches on sight. Seriously. Some sketchy a**hole strolls into your inn in the middle of a fiery witch battle? You shoot her. Obviously."
--"I wish this made less sense." / Less sense than what?"
--"I don't think we can trust this woman, but at least she got him half-naked and wet for us."
--"THEY HAVE A GATTLING GUN?! WHAT YEAR IS THIS? WHERE ARE THEY?"
--"They need him to be Hawkeye right now."
--"Quick poll, do we actually care about any of these people?" / "If your question means, 'Do we give a s*** that she dies,' the answer is no."
--"Hansel, you have done nothing this entire movie to make me believe you can successfully kill a witch."
--"No. This is not how diabetes works. I've seen enough diabetic seizures and meltdowns to know this is really not how the f*** it works."

"It's just kinda dull right now. I want some weird plot twist out of nowhere, like Gretel grows a penis or something."

You'd think that a movie with such an interesting premise -- yes, an interesting premise, because we thought it was a hysterical idea when we first heard about it, and far more sensical than Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires -- would hold our attention better. This is a standard case of dullness resulting from Too Much Crazy and not enough story, which makes the audience numb to the action-crammed sequences. The saving grace here is that the movie is only 88 minutes long, so kudos to the person/people astute enough to realize there was nothing to stretch out here. Sarah counted, and there were six big fight scenes in the span of 80 minutes. Plus, we can't even remember how many bodies straight-up exploded. Not all at once, either, but at some point in every fight, and then some. Hansel states that the ways to kill a witch are to cut off her head and set her on fire, but we only saw two (of at least twenty) witches go down like that.

Let's take a moment to point out that the first insulin shots were not administered until 1922. Hansel and Gretel also have a taser and automatic weaponry. However, this movie takes place in a time period when there was no running electricity, and suspected witches were still getting burned at the stake. Okay, carrying on.

"Why has there not been one single shot of Jeremy's ass?"
"I don't know, but on the plus side, this also means there haven't been any objectifying shots of Gemma. That's a bonus for women in action movies everywhere."

Judging from that movie poster, and the way movies like this usually turn out, we figured we'd have to endure some good old fashioned, there's-no-way-she-can-fight-in-that-outfit displays of Sexy Action Heroine. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that despite the medieval-ish setting, there was only one naked woman, it wasn't Arterton, and the nudity had context (Hansel's love interest, Mina, a good witch, swims with him in a magic healing spring after he's injured.)

Speaking of Mina, here's where an age-old fairytale trope comes in: Good witches are pretty, and bad witches are ugly. Hansel meets Mina because the townspeople are about to drown her for witchcraft without any proof, and Hansel argues her case. You can tell a witch just by looking at her because the dark magic corrupts their features; a witch has black teeth, pale, veiny skin, and jacked-up eyes, he tells the people, so pretty Mina is set free. This is part of why evil Muriel's plan is so dangerous: that invulnerability ritual restores her beauty, so she can infiltrate wherever she likes. Pretty people get nicer treatment, an unfortunate fact.

The Best Part: Like we said, Mina got Hansel's clothes off. Yes, we're hypocrites about the objectification thing. No, we don't care. There's a lot of lost man-ogling time to make up in action cinema.

Also, Hansel and Gretel were trailed by a teenage fanboy who kept a scrapbook of all their adventures -- he'd totally run a "f***yeahhanselandgretel" Tumblr if it were 2013 -- and wanted to become a witch-hunter himself. The boy's enthusiasm was adorable, and Hansel and Gretel took him under their wing without reservations. 

The Worst Part: The story would've benefitted from more development. #actionmovieproblems

We give Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters a solid D. You might even hear from these fairytale siblings again, if rumors about a sequel are true.

(Poster and trailer © Paramount Pictures)