The film’s tagline may be “Classic tale, new twist,” but you’ve seen all these tropes before. Heroes confronting their tragic familial past! Evil women stealing your children! Female heroes who can kick your butt, but still need to be saved by a dude! So many screenwriting and filmmaking clichés, all packed into 88 minutes. It’s kind of impressive, really, if it wasn’t so boring and uninspired.
Directed and co-written by Tommy Wirkola (D.W. Harper is also credited as a screenwriter), the film works hard for its R rating. The first line of Gretel’s (Gemma Arterton, of “Quantum of Solace,” and “Clash of the Titans”) has the f-word in it. Other people curse a lot, too. There’s a female character who gets naked who really doesn’t need to. Lots of people’s heads are stepped on by a troll, and the witches are disgusting and feral, and there’s enough blood to rival any of January’s other action releases, like last week’s “The Last Stand.” The film tries so hard to update the classic children’s tale that it becomes a mass of repetitive tropes, a rehashing of tried formulas, with very few ideas that actually link it to the original tale by the Brothers Grimm or that ground it in a believable past.
And, most frustratingly, it’s just not that funny—even though it’s produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, who have brought us such very funny things as “Casa de mi Padre,” “Bachelorette,” and “The Campaign”—nor is it so dark and vicious that it operates as a proper horror film. It’s stuck in a bad in-between place, so you won’t remember the jokes or the one-liners or the chases or the fight sequences or the many, many deaths. You may remember how unimpressively misogynistic the film manages to be while having both a major and a minor heroine, but hey, perhaps that’s just me. I get irked by how consistently women are thrown around and disparaged onscreen; it’s just this quirk I have.
“Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” begins with the story we’re all familiar with: Young siblings are led into the forest by their father, abandoned there by him, and stumble upon a house made entirely of candy. They start snacking until they realize a witch lives there, who imprisons them and force-feeds them sugar to make them fat so she can eat them, blah blah blah, the siblings fight back, they kill the witch, the witch burns, the kids go back home, yay! All is well again.
The “twist” provided to us is that Hansel and Gretel get their freedom through murder, sure, but Hansel (Jeremy Renner, of “Thor,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “The Avengers,” and “The Bourne Legacy”) develops diabetes (oh, my bad, the “sugar sickness”) because of all that candy, the siblings never find their parents again, and they grow up to be famed “witch hunters,” traveling across the land and slaying those feral, animalistic creatures, who have disgusting, scaly flesh, can fly on brooms, and possess super-speed and excessive strength. They’re so famous that the mayor of a German town hires them to come investigate the sudden surge in missing children, because Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare, of “The Last Stand”) just isn’t cutting it. When they get there, Hansel and Gretel save Mina (Pihla Viitala), a woman the sheriff had wrongly accused of being a witch, and meet a superfan, Ben (Thomas Mann, of “Fun Size,” “Project X,” and “It’s Kind of a Funny Story”), who has both a scrapbook of the siblings’ press clippings and a mega crush on Gretel.
But Hansel and Gretel don’t need anyone else—they’ve survived this long with only each other. Mina has eyes for Hansel, but he’s too awkward to be interested. Ben is far too young for Gretel, and his adoration could just get him hurt. Nevertheless, the siblings realize they’ll need allies when they encounter Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen, of “Taken 2”), who has a plan to make witches invincible and immortal. Uh oh.
Maybe “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” would have been more interesting if the witches had a different, more unique motive. Or more consistent if the filmmakers even remotely tried to temper the modernity of Renner, Arterton, and Mann, who speak in cool-and-casual American accents and slang that contrasts greatly with the other characters’ old English or British stylings. Or more amusing if the humor wasn’t just sarcastic one-liners from Hansel or sassy backtalk from Gretel—if we got flashbacks from their previous witch conquests, for example, to establish their relationship in an efficient and humorous way. Or if the fight scenes weren’t so reliant on the siblings’ steampunk-inspired weaponry and incorporated more interesting angles, or editing techniques, or fight choreography. Or maybe … I mean, this list could basically go on forever.
“Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” does very few things right—three things, actually. Renner and Janssen first: The former is his usually sardonic self, and although the film would benefit from more of his cutting droll, it’s a nice addition whenever it pops up. Similarly well-cast is Janssen, who is manipulative and mysterious as the evil witch leader but has very little to work with. And lastly, there’s the wonderfully weird character Edward (played by Derek Mears, voiced by Robin Atkin Downes), a troll who is forced to work for the witches but just wants to be a good guy. You’ll think immediately of other violent-when-necessary-but-somewhat-gentle giants like the titular character from last year’s “Wreck-It Ralph,” and the film would have been more interesting if Edward had more to do than just fawn over Gretel.
But “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” is defined far more by its limitations than its accomplishments. It skimps on backstory, motive, and mythology for big guns that are blessed by a good witch. That sounds absurd, but so is much of what’s in “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters”—and not in a good way.
