Review of HANSEL AND GRETEL - WITCH HUNTERS

HANSEL AND GRETEL - WITCH HUNTERS

Fantasy, 2014

Once again, we're in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, and the mother tells the father to take the children out into the woods and leave them there. Once again, the siblings find the house made of candy and, famished, start eating. No 'Nibble, nibble like a mouse, who is nibbling at my house', but we do have GRETEL giving the witch a chicken bone to convince her that she and HANSEL are too thin to be eaten, and we do have the witch being burned alive in the oven.

Then new material appears, sort of a Hansel and Gretel sequel. While opening credits flash on the screen, newspaper headlines appear and describe the wondrous exploits of a pair of orphan witch-killers-for-hire. In AUSBERG (a real town in Germany), SHERIFF BERRINGER is inciting a mob to burn at the stake a pretty young woman, MINA accused of witchcraft. H&G arrive, Gretel checks Mina's teeth as if she was a horse, and says because her teeth and skin are unblemished, Mina cannot be a witch. (God help any woman in that town who has psoriasis and dental caries.) Mina is grateful to them (so much so that later she goes skinny dipping with Hansel).

The mayor of Ausberg, ENGLEMANN, hires H&G to rescue children who were kidnapped by witches. Sheriff Berringer is really pissed and vows revenge for being deprived of his prey, Mina, and also for being deprived of the fee for rescuing the children and killing the witches.  The witches are also pretty pissed, especially a 'grand witch', MURIEL. And--guess what--grand witches can also disguise their faces so their skin and teeth look healthy.

Uh, Mina, is there something you need to tell us?

There's a lot of silliness in this movie.  The witches usually have incredible strength and speed, but when the plot demands it H&G can beat the crap out of them. Hansel, the jerk, bounds into a witch's house without looking, and, no surprise, gets knocked on the head. Also, there are uncomfortable aspects of the film. The witch burning is too reminiscent of Salem, white witches (yes, there are those) are good but black is bad, and Hansel and Gretel share a bedroom, granted with bunk beds but with her wearing only a pajama top.

In spite of all that, the movie is fun. It has no meaningful interpretation of the H&G myth or insightful portrayals of the characters, but it does have a lot of action and enough plot twists to draw you in. It got my pulse up to a run.  I give it ++++.