There was a side of me saying you are making a big mistake, as the other side kept pounding repeatedly that this one could turn out to be a cool action flick. I'm talking of the day I decided that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters would be a movie worth watching in the theatre. Then the makers released an awfully bad trailer and my skeptic side went bombastic screaming for me to ditch this movie and live a peaceful life. But the tough nut that I am! I decided to go ahead with my initial plan, waking up early in the morning on a weekend to catch the first show. Less than half way through the movie, I did not care about anything at all. I gave a hoot about how the movie would end, or the so-called action scenes that had me all ecstatic earlier. I simply wanted the ordeal to end. The only thing that managed to keep me in my seat was the presence of Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as the lead characters. The poor ones had not much to go with, hardly any chemistry as on-screen siblings and just a few one-liners here and there. But they still come across as talented actors who, given the right people in the right places, could have delivered much more.
The movie starts off with the young Hansel and Gretel abandoned by their father in a dark forest, as the classic fairytale had already told us. Maybe they could have ended the movie right there and I would have had less to complain about. But they persisted, building on the siblings growing to become famed witch hunters. They are beckoned to a town where children are going missing and as they dig deeper (it wasn't much of a digging, actually), they unravel the plans of a Grand Witch played by Franke Janssen (aka Jean Grey for the X-Men lovers). They have to stop the witch as along the way they also discover the truth behind their abandonment (which would have been intriguing, but for the fact it comes at a time when you are already planning your lunch menu) and befriend a troll.
Now my problem with the makers of this movie would be endless, but I would gladly point out the most irritating aspect. Please listen carefully, wherever you are... a witch no longer looks like this, part of a fancy dress competition that went horribly wrong.
They look more like these.. take your pick.
And why didn't you setup a production design team? Or did they fail to show up? A thing that Hollywood usually gets so perfectly, creating the visual aura of the time and the place the plot of the movie is based in, was abysmally lacking here. The town looked like a set newly created, the forest looked hardly menacing and poor Hansel and Gretel were handed over some dumb looking tight pants. Getting things right in the art department is at times taken so much for granted by the audience that you do not talk about it after watching a great movie, but its absence can be clearly felt in such a movie. And what was all that about Hansel needing insulin shots? An inside joke? Annoying!
It turned out to be a pitiful experience in the end. Reminded me of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance of last year. Where you go in with minimal expectations and still come out disappointed. Thankfully, Jeremy Renner still gets the intense looks right and makes his character believable, though it was Gemma Arterton who kept me hooked to whatever extent it was possible in her arrow-shooting and witch slashing role. Hope better things fall in place for her. Oh, yeah, the troll was pretty good too!
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