Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie Review

I suppose that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters came about in wake of other dark fairy tale revisions such as Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Jack the Giant Slayer. Unlike the others Hansel & Gretel was not meant to be taken very seriously, and indeed it is hard to do so. But even for a fantasy/action/comedy/horror movie that aims for campy fun, it's still not very impressive.

The siblings Hansel and Gretel are left alone in the woods by their father and captured by a dark witch in a candy house. However, they kill the witch and escape. Years later the orphans Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) have become famous witch hunters. When eleven children go missing in a small village, the Mayor summons Hansel and Gretel to rescue them. Upon arrival, the siblings save the red haired Mina (Pihla Viitala) from the local sheriff (Peter Stormare) who is accusing Mina of Witchcraft. Soon they discover that the Blood Moon will approach in three days and the powerful dark witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) is responsible for the abduction of the children. She intends to use the children together with a secret ingredient in a Sabbath to make the coven of witches protected against fire. As Hansel and Gretel race against time and fight off powerful witches, they begin to learn some mysterious secrets about their parents.

I have to give this movie a little bit of credit. They took what is ordinarily a short and simple fairy tale and did practically nothing to change it. The whole classic fairy tale is done during the prologue of the movie before the opening credits start rolling. This movie is about what happened afterwards and hints at creative underlying motives of the characters. The fairy tale is not corrupted or reinterpreted; just expanded. I liked that, and it gave Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters some potential to be an interesting and fun movie.

Of course, they didn't actually make it interesting or very fun. The movie starts out with some exciting action scenes chasing and killing witches with ridiculous weapons that would seem at home in a Final Fantasy video game, but then it slows down a whole lot. Hansel develops a romantic interest with Mina and Gretel meets up with a troll. Most of these scenes don't seem to do much for the story overall. I realize a movie like this isn't going to be profound by any means, but during these scenes it's almost like it's flailing around to achieve some deep character development. That's respectable, but seems so perfunctory and not well thought out.

The movie is very predictable. With each character that is introduced, you can pretty accurately predict how each one was going to play out. I was never wrong. I did, however, appreciate that there wasn't an insipid teenage love triangle forced into the story. We have too much of that rubbish already. One inconsequential detail about Hansel's character that I liked a whole lot was the fact that because he was force fed candy as a kid in the candy cottage, he now has diabetes and has to take regular insulin shots. That makes sense, and is not something I had ever considered. It really has no meaningful role in the movie, but it was kind of a neat detail.

The special effects were kind of hit or miss. The CGI lacked refinement and looked very much like it was computer-generated imagery; the blood and gore looked almost silly, but was better than that of Sharknado. The practical effects were decent, though. The aforementioned troll was all animatronics and looked pretty good. Exploding heads and other such nastiness looked good for what it was. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but that's appealing to some viewers.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an interesting genre mash up. The fantasy isn't half bad, the action is ridiculous and hard to take seriously, the comedy usually falls flat, and the horror is more like "somewhat gross" than it is actually scary. There's several F-bombs and other profanity which I didn't really feel was necessary; the profanity and gore gives it an R rating. The story slows in the middle, but the beginning and end is pretty exciting. In the end it's not a very good movie and isn't as much fun as it tries to be. It's little bit better than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; it doesn't quite achieve what it's trying to be. It's okay if you just want to watch some senseless violence that doesn't require much thought, and even then it's barely worth the price to rent. Otherwise, don't bother.

I know I've asked before, but what other dark fairy tale revisions would you like to see?

Movie Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Generally, when a non-movie media become popular some Einstein in Hollywood thinks there needs to be a movie based off of it. These have varying degrees of success. Movies based on books usually do okay; comic books tend to be hit or miss; and TV show movies tend to be pretty bad. They have yet to make a good movie based on a video game, with the worst probably being the Super Mario Bros. movie (1993). Disney had some success with making Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl(2003) which was based on the Disneyland attraction. Evidently, Disney thought that with the success thatPirates of the Caribbean brought them, a similar production based on a long running video game series would be good idea.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) is set in a romanticized ancient Persia. In the prologue, King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) adopts an orphaned street urchin, Dastan, to rear along with his other sons. King Sharaman thought Dastan was worthy of becoming nobility because Dastan defended another boy who was being beaten and then escaped by running around on rooftops. Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) grows to become a reputed warrior and prince. After receiving information that the Holy City of Alamut is supplying weapons to the enemies of Persia, Dastan’s adoptive brothers Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) and Tus (Richard Coyle) prepare to attack the city. While attacking the city, Dastan comes into possession of a strange dagger. King Sharaman stops the attack and arranged for the marriage of Tus to Alamut’s princess, Tamina (Gemma Arterton). Dastan is later framed for the mysterious murder of King Sharaman. Dastan escapes with Princess Tamina who tells him about the dagger’s power to send its wielder back in time by a few seconds. Dastan and Tamina set out to discover who is behind the false rumors about Alamut, the murder of King Sharaman, who is after the time-altering dagger and why.

Similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is full of silly characters, over the top action scenes, and special effects. The only Prince of Persia game I’ve ever played was in 1989 on an Apple II computer. The storyline there wasn’t any more complicated than that of Super Mario Bros. game in 1985: save the princess. Other Prince of Persia games have been released, but I don’t know how the movie compares, as I have never played the more recent ones.

Dastan is a painfully generic hero character. He’s inherently good and incorruptible; he isn’t challenged by moral dilemmas, he just does the right thing because he’s good. This makes him very uninteresting. He’s also a carbon copy of every Persian hero to ever grace the silver screen; Disney’sAladdin (1992) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940) come to mind. He’s really not any different at the end of the movie than he is at the beginning. He’s just boring.

Tamina drove me nuts! There’s hardly a single line that she speaks to Dastan that isn’t somehow insulting, demeaning, or challenging of his capabilities or competence. She was bratty, untrusting of anyone, and would stab Dastan in the back at her earliest convenience. Why on earth were they in love by the end of the movie!? I would have tied her to a cactus half way through the movie and left her for dead. The romantic interest between Dastan and Tamina had no basis or logic behind it. The meager romance was included for the sake of having romantic scenes in the movie. Towards the climax of the movie Dastan has Tamina by the arm over a cliff, keeping her from falling to her death. I actually shouted at Dastan to just let go and put her out of his misery. She is pretty, but I’d like to think there should be more requirements to being a princess than just being pretty. Tamina is one of the worst damsels in distresses I’ve ever seen.

The action scenes were rather confusing. A lot of the movie was filmed in front of a green screen. The backgrounds occasionally didn’t match up with the movements of the camera very well, which gave the viewer a vague sense of space. On top of this the camera was often doing close shots of the actors fighting. This gave you a good sense that something was happening, but not a good sense of what was happening. Yes they are fighting, but what is it they are doing and who is winning? I felt like I should be on the edge of my seat, but I wasn’t sure why since I couldn’t tell what was actually going on.

At one point, Dastan is sinking in huge sinkhole of sand. I’m not really sure how he got there and it certainly doesn’t show how he got out. One moment he’s in the sinkhole, the next moment he’s on this cascading waterfall of sand tumbling down towards a cliff. It doesn’t show Dastan falling through the sinkhole and onto the sand-waterfall; it doesn’t show him escaping the sinkhole only to fall again into the sand-waterfall. This is more an issue of bad editing than confusing action scenes.

Not only were the characters uninteresting and shallow, but I wasn’t really sure what they were fighting for. Sure, keep the Dagger of Time away from the evil Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley), but what happens if he gets it? They could just reset time they way they want it. No one has a risk of dying; they just go back in time a few seconds and prevent the death. They do this several times in the movie. So, if you can just correct anything with the dagger, who cares of Nazim becomes King of the Persian Empire? Who cares if anyone dies? It can just be corrected.

Disney seemed to be trying to make another swashbuckler action movie with Prince of Persia, but the movie just ended up being really underdeveloped and shoddily done. If you look at it in the context of being a very simple fairy tale with some over the top action scenes, it becomes slightly more palatable. The movie is also such light viewing that you could put it on as background noise while cleaning the house, catch glimpses once in a while, and still not miss anything. It’s a pretty clean movie, too. It would be alright for a family movie night with kids, but really there are much better movies you can watch as a family.