Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Not a Black Widow-Hawkeye spin-off...we think

Grade: C -
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala and Derek Mears
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 28 min.

The intriguing premise behind Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters doesn’t subsist beyond the first 3-D-enhanced witch chase, a whirling dervish of spells and steampunk that ends with the undead female being punched in the face. That happens a lot in Hansel and Gretel, including during an interrogation scene seemingly lifted from a Zero Dark Thirty storyboard. There's also women (not just witches) repeatedly being beheaded, burned and bullet-riddled. Still, it’s hard to brand this massively fractured fairy tale as misogynistic, for the buckets of three-dimensional viscera it flings at the camera know no gender.

Decades after escaping the clutches of an evil beldam by incinerating her inside the oven of her candy-coated hovel, Hansel (Jeremy Renner, a long way from two Oscar nominations) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are grown-up and exacting revenge for their parents’ death. Armed with equally anachronistic weaponry and American accents, the avenging siblings roam the countryside as witch hunters for hire.

They’re called to the German village of Augsburg, where the children are being kidnapped by an über-witch named Muriel (Famke Janssen) and her coven, who are planning entertainment for the upcoming Feast of the Blue Moon. On the agenda is sacrificing 12 boys and girls, followed by using the heart of a grand white witch to create a potion that will make the witches impervious to fire, enabling them to … Zzzzz ...

Writer-director Tommy Wirkola foists just enough flesh, gore and profanity to (intentionally) earn an R-rating, an important fact for any parent lazily considering Hansel and Gretel as their kids’ weekend outing. The periodic F-word is what passes for a punchline in Wirkola’s charmless script. But even the most mature audiences will recoil not merely from the cavalcade of severed limbs and decapitations, but their utter pointlessness within a redundant, meandering plot.

There are a smattering of knowing grace notes, like the siblings’ dual reputations as renowned folk heroes and troublemaking mercenaries, and the fact that forced candy consumption during his childhood ordeal with the old witch made Hansel diabetic and requires regular insulin shots.

But, the gruesome far outweighs the good. The most unintentionally amusing moment is not when Gretel uses a stun gun to defibrillate a troll (Derek Mears) with a lead foot but a heart of gold, but when the troll reveals his name is "Edward," which through his digitized baritone sounded for a second like “Ed Wood.” In truth, Hansel and Gretel is redolent of another schlock artist—only a movie like this can make the phrase “kitschy Robert Rodriguez knockoff” not seem duplicative.

Hanna

Cate, have you seen the script?

Grade: B –

Director: Joe Wright

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, and Jessica Barden

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 51 min.

Hanna isn’t merely a departure from director Joe Wright’s mannered filmography. It feels more like his antidote for it.

A stylized fable whose substance does not fully measure up to its resounding razzmatazz. Hanna blends a breathless chase thriller with a fairy tale conceit. It’s as if Wright is trading in his high-lit reputation from Pride and Prejudice and Atonement for the sake of proving his mettle as an action director.

The result is not without success. For all its Grimm allegory, the film is like an alt-universe continuum of Luc Besson’s The Professional filtered into the visual stylings of Run Lola Run. (Hanna’s final act is also set in Berlin.)

The first 16 years of Hanna’s hardscrabble life take place in the wintery woods of Finland. There, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, whom Wright directed in Atonement) and her father, Erik (Eric Bana), live in a spartan shack devoid of modern creature comforts. Erik has taught his daughter the fine art of bow hunting, hand-to-hand combat, multilingualism, and a virtual memorization of the encyclopedia.

All this preparation is a prelude for a nebulous mission targeting Marissa (Cate Blanchett, doing her best Tilda Swinton impersonation), a fastidious, hard-edged CIA operative who shares an unpleasant past with Erik and a mysterious connection with Hanna. Once Hanna decides she is ready to leave the roost, it triggers a chase to kill Marissa before she can return the favor.

For all Hanna’s superhuman fighting skills, her sheltered upbringing makes her ill-prepared for life outside the forest, or even basic human interaction. She flees her first night in a hotel room in terror, petrified by the technological cacophony sounded by whirling ceiling fans, showers, televisions, and an electric teakettle.

And, although the film couches Hanna’s affinity for Sophie (Jessica Barden) – a glib Brit teen traveling through Morocco with her hippy parents – as vaguely sexual, it is actually the awkward reactions of a pubescent girl struggling to understand, much less cope with, an unfamiliar rush of feelings.

Hanna ends up with a chase through Berlin’s now-defunct Spreepark, notably its replica Grimm Haus. Indeed, all the metaphor-making quickly elbows out any emotional grace notes. Hanna is the fairy-tale princess, Goldilocks, and Red Riding Hood rolled up into one pint-sized Nikita. Meanwhile, Blanchett’s Marissa is a mash-up of the wicked stepmother/witch and Big Bad Wolf – there’s an unfortunate trip to grandma’s house and other delicious kitsch like the row of electric toothbrushes Marissa uses to scrub her incisors until the gums bleed. The better to eat you with, my dear?

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/8nAdO

Tangled

"This is what you call a hairy situation." There, I said it...

Grade: C +

Director: Nathan Greno and Byron Howard

Starring the voices of: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, and Donna Murphy

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

During a New England car trip several years ago, my nostalgic streak propelled me to seek out as many indigenous, homespun landmarks as time would allow. After crossing a particular covered bridge in Vermont, I peered back at a sign nailed above the archway only to see that the structure – constructed to resemble the truss bridges of yore – was actually built in 1982. My sense of wistful excitement instantly evaporated.

While the computer-generated Tangled is made to resemble a throwback, hand-drawn Disney animated classic, its 3-D countenance and benign, uneven script betray something trying a little too hard to hearken back to a simpler age of animation, to be the anti-Pixar, anti-Shrek kiddie flick. Unfortunately, the narrative baby gets thrown out with the pop-culture-referencing bathwater.

In this revamp of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale from writer Dan Fogelman (Bolt; Cars), an infant Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped from her regal crib by Mother Gothel (voiced by Tony Award-winning Donna Murphy), an old crone who covets the young ingénue’s long locks for their restorative, anti-aging properties.

Forbidden by Gothel from ever leaving her ersatz home, the grown-up, doe-eyed Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) eventually yearns to venture into the outside world. She finally finds the chutzpah to descend her tower prison after being visited by Flynn Ryder (Zachery Levi), a handsome, wiseacre bandit on the run from the authorities whose principal functions are to be a love interest and a fount of one unfunny one-liner after another.

The aim of presenting a spunkier, self-assured damsel-in-egress somewhat flies in the face of the symbolism of a female lead who disables foes using a frying pan and her flowing blond hair. Plus, after the relatively underwhelming box-office draw of The Princess and the Frog, Disney execs changed this film’s traditional title to a more gender-neutral one.

Veterans Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater compose a number of serviceable songs throughout, although they only come to life when channeled through Murphy’s formidable pipes. As the storyline lurches about, you’re left to ponder such mundane matters as why all the king’s horses and men are assigned to retrieve a stolen crown, while the only effort expended to find his lost daughter is floating a bunch of hopeful lanterns into the cosmos every year on her birthday.

Tangled tries to blend traditionalism with hip modernity. However, bridging that gap proves a bridge too far.

Neil Morris