Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; By No Means Another 'Van Helsing'

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the new MGM-produced film by a relative new director Tommy Wirkola.  Definitely new, but a name that I thought might just be someone I recognized.  Sure enough, he directed and wrote, like H&G, a Norwegian film called Dead Snow (English Title), a particularly cool little comedic horror film that is interesting, kind of ridiculous, and topnotch on the gore.  Learning this after seeing the film has actually upped my general enjoyment of it, as some of the most gruesome shots in the film were quite juicy, and now I know why and where to give the credit.

So, en route to see the movie, I was with a friend.  He was telling me about this making-of section on the DVD for Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It's actually interesting and you should watch it when you have 6 minutes to kill.  To summarize, it's Steven Spielberg explaining how he didn't want to do the movie, and how without Harrison Ford's interest and then George Lucas' endearing persistence (I'm not sure what else to call the attitude of a friendly man who has bad ideas), the movie would not have existed.  At least not until someone else bought the rights to it and tore it a new one.  So, you have Spielberg's point of view, trying to be creative, genuinely new, but still preserving everything that is core to the Indiana Jones universe.  Then you have George Lucas who is all like, "Let's do a B-movie with aliens!   No, wait, not aliens, but "inter-dimensional beings--who look like aliens!  It'll be great, I swear!"  Basically, one kid spends all his effort building a medieval Lego world with dragons and knights and tries his hardest to make it look good, and then you have his friend who is annoying but has his heart in the right place who comes over and starts pulling out all the dinosaurs and He-Man toys to take over little medieval land because it looks cool.

Where the fuck am I going with this?  Well, many people have been worried, due to the trailer, that H&G is just going to be Van Helsing Part 2.  Why?  Because it's backdrop is set in a period era (in this case the 1800's) and the producers' scant ability to keep it from becoming an anachronistic buffet of lolz doesn't look good.  Van Helsing suffered at the box office because of this, among other reasons, being overly action-packed and rather inorganic and insensitive to any of the folklore it was sporting.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters definitely can be accused of some of this, but I would say that it was more black and white in pros and cons, unlike Van Helsing, which I'm still upset about to this day that I paid full, evening admission for seeing stuff that constantly made me, a strong fan of cheese, twist and turn unhappily. If I can't even laugh at how silly it is, there's something very wrong.

For H&G, it was like there was a Spielberg and a Lucas dividing the film.  The story is decent, follows plot points, and everyone has that fancy vaguely foreign accent to help put you in the mood that you're watching a film set in a different time and place.  But Hansel and Gretel...it's like they were transported from an alternate reality and looked "passable" for the time period.  They don't have accents, everyone else holds a touch of one, sparing the peppy pseudo-sidekick Ben, played by Thomas Mann (Project X), but I've noticed that younger actors do that less than the older ones in movies so I didn't mind.  Everyone who has a coat in the film has a noticeably nice leather coat, but the two main characters look just that extra bit of too cool for school.  Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, Bourne Legacy, Dahmer, Justice League), who plays Hansel, has this sweet-ass coat that's got these neat little frills on the shoulders, a perfectly popped collar, and is tailored to expertly hide all his gadgets so he doesn't look like he's too weighed down.  Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Clash of the Titans), also has her own set of nifty frills on her mega-tailored slim-cut coat, and wears painted-on leather pants.  Now, granted, this was all possible in the 1800's, but the styles weren't something a little German village would have ever seen, and especially on a young woman.  It might have been nice if just once the townsfolk said that they looked overly fancy or eccentric.  They also bring in trippy, out-of-period weaponry and gadgets.  Their guns are super stylized and tricked out beyond necessary means.  The townspeople are pretty much in total awe of Hansel and Gretel's grasp of science for the time period.  And I was in awe as well.  Case in point: There is a steel and copper wire Jerry-rigged stun gun that also acts as a defibrillator.  You heard me.

So, bringing this all into perspective, it felt like there was a Spielberg who wrote the story, the side characters, who was in charge of costumes, set design, and created possibly one of the coolest, most realistic trolls I've ever seen come from a film that wasn't a CGI fap session.  The lead bad guy has a good motive and is well-written, played by the lovely Famke Janssen (X-Men trilogy, Goldeneye, The Faculty) who has cool, creepy makeup--as do her many other cohorts, who come, literally, in all shapes and sizes.  I'm willing to bet the makeup/prosthetics department had a blast.  And there are even worthwhile, well-written side characters, like the grizzly douchebag town sheriff, played by the always familiar yet still a man of many faces, Peter Stormare (The Brothers Grimm, Constantine, Armageddon, The Big Lebowski).

Then, there was a Lucas, who was in charge of everything Hansel and Gretel.  Their personality/voices, their clothing, their awesome toys.  They acted just fine, and were having some fun with the film, but I was thrown off by their casual, 'here to kick ass and chew bubble gum' attitudes and appearance.  I get the idea that they were supposed to be different, that their lifestyle as witch hunters had turned them into the nonchalant badasses they strolled into town as, but I felt they could have blended in a bit more.  Just a touch.

All that being said, I laughed a lot.  The gore was juicy and well-placed.  It had one booby, a nice booty, and Jeremy Renner got to have his shirt off, naturally.  Fortunately, everything mentioned above was within context and appropriately part of plot devices.  The costumes and makeup for the witches in the film were really good, and the set design was preciously done.  The little town looked like something right out of a woodcutting, and the infamous Gingerbread house looked good enough to eat.

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

It entertained me, and I never once looked at my watch--which would have been really sad considering it's right on that perfect hour and a half marker.  The pacing was surprisingly good.  There was a really nice lull in the film between action sequences where you were getting fed character and story development--and then it got back on the flashy train and reminded you that it had some cool, shiny action balls it was going to wave in your face.  Truthfully, had it not been for one particular Matrix moment where someone throws something and the other person does the slow-motion lean-back to dodge it, I would have liked this movie even more.  But frankly, I'm tired of that effect, and it made me frown.  Thankfully, it only happened once.

Nudity, humor, juicy gore, cool effects, decent story.  Not a spectacular event, no Van Helsing by any means, but most certainly a good little escape into the fantasy realm--and free of the abused folklore that is vampires, zombies, and werewolves.

Bottom line:  Deserving of its R rating, and enjoyable all more the because of it.  Also, Jeremy Renner, always good.