Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters product reviews

While there has been a lot of harsh criticism regarding these latest "retellings" of old fairytales and myths, I myself find it refreshing to have people putting time into trying to justify the plots, and think up proper origin stories for this type of thing.

In this instance we have Hansel and Gretel in the future long after killing the Witch in the candy house, but despite the direct plot involving witch hunting, the film is actually all a long cyclical story that returns back to the events on the night that they were abandoned by their parents. The film sets to distinguish rules for identifying witched that don't involve killing the person accused, and creates a set of minor character types. So despite the generally light-hearted comical character of the film, theoretically this could lead to a resurgence in Witch films that have more depth to them.

I enjoyed the look of the film, taking place in villages, with a very vintage steampunk look to it., our hero and heroines weaponry match the steampunk style, but despite their awesome appearance, really have little effectiveness.

Gemma Arterton (Gretel), plays her role well, and reasonably successfully pulls off the strong female role. Jeremy Renner (Hansel) on the other hand, looks like he hasn't even bothered getting changed out of his 'Avengers' outfit. His character is very much one-dimensional, and while he does get some character development, he is still a largely useless character. The one redeeming point to his character is the use of the "sugar sickness" which is a great way to remind everyone of the dangers of sugars and diabetes. Unfortunately, this film isn't really targeted at children, with attempted rape, murder, etc, but it was still nice to see some social commentary in use.

The film looks to have been shot on a budget, and has the quality of a children's straight-to-dvd film, but the content doesn't make it suitable for kids. But I enjoyed the plot, and while I most likely will not watch it again for a while, I did rather enjoy watching it.

When I saw the trailers for Hansel and Gretel I thought it looked promising but that I wouldn't watch it until it came out on DVD. Really, really glad that I waited.

Hansel and Gretel stars that famous brother and sister from the fairytale of the same name, now grown up and professional witch hunters. Whilst this is a believable future storyline for the duo the plot was so poorly written that it had me wanting my money back.

The pot was nothing unique which I think is a shame as they really could have run with it and gotten a great story out of it, but they just recycled a tried and true plot without really adding to it. I thought that the one twist it had in it was ok, but everything was as I expected and the gore was just there for the sake of gore.

All in all not a movie I will be watching again any time soon, maybe on tv, free to air, but otherwise nope.

It is said that there are no new stories in the world, only variations on old ones. This movie really brings that point home. This movie is set in such a way that I could not help but think of the 2004 movie "Van Helsing" starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Bekinsale - The same sorts of weapons, outfits, attitudes... just replace vampires with witches and you could almost be watching the same movie.

In this we see Alice Creed and Hawkeye - who are siblings - kicking Jean Grey's butt with crossbows and shotguns while she's throwing fireballs and "chronic munchies" spells around like candy at a kid's party. However, I have to say the repeating crossbow was very well done. Not too sure about the shotgun because it seemed more like something dreamed by by Greg Broadmore for his Dr Grordbort universe, without valves.

This title took the classic fairytale and dragged it kicking and screaming through a very dark place, then added a whacky twist and some stunning special effects. It's the first of the new 'fad' of dark fairytales that actually gave me a few moments of squirmy guts, but really only one scene gave me queezies to any significant degree - The Curse of Hunger for Crawling Things is one curse I am very glad isn't real. -shudder-

OK, so... was this movie worth seeing? For me, not overly. Sure it was interesting to see what Tommy Wirkola had done with it, and I loved Gemma Arterton's tough, leather-clad persona - total *ROWR* material there - but Jeremy Renner's performance was limp and even his portrayal of Hansel was that of a second-fiddle to Gretel. Basically, this could almost have come over as a thinly-veiled Feminist Plot movie - tough females, wimpy males always having to be rescued... throw in a dragon and a few pieces of shining armour and the cliche would have been complete.

Overall, a fun little romp, especially if you think Gemma's a bit of tasty, but if you want a nice family movie or something with a good plot you can sink your teeth into... forget it.