Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH
HUNTERS (12)
D: Tommy Wirkola
Paramount/MGM/MTV (Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick
& Beau Flynn)
US/Germany 2012
88 mins
Action/Fantasy
W: Tommy Wirkola [based on the fairy tale by The Brothers
Grimm]
DP: Michael Bonvillain
Ed: Jim Page
Mus: Atli Örvarsson
Jeremy Renner (Hansel), Gemma Arterton (Gretel), Famke Janssen
(Muriel), Peter Stormare (Berringer), Thomas Mann (Ben)
Yet another re-imagination of a fairytale on the Hollywood
production line following Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Red Riding Hood and two Snow White movies released in 2012.
Produced by MTV films, this movie is clearly aimed at the
"young adult" demographic (Or Twilight fans), it's far too violent for young kids and too fairytale-lite for grown ups, making it fall into a very niche groove.
Personally, I thought this was better than Alice In Wonderland
but not by much. Gemma Arterton is decent as Gretel, but Jeremy Renner is very much miscast as Hansel. I made an assumption that Orlando Bloom must have been busy down the jobcentre. The story
isn't too bad in comparison to the original fairytale, with some well-paced action scenes in a build up to a very badly edited climax with some questionably CGI effects. The F-word is also used
quite a few times, incredibly unnecessarily in a film which would've done better if aimed at a younger audience.
4/10
