HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS was, as I put it to Steve and Jon while we walked out of the theater, "a delightfully stupid romp". It's a silly mindless action flick that isn't terribly period- or region-faithful, but let's be honest here, you didn't buy a ticket for HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS because you wanted a movie for the ages. No, you wanted to watch Hawkeye shoot witches in the face with a comically oversized gun, wear leather pants, and say the word "fuck" a lot; because someone told you there was surprise!nudity; and because you want to watch Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, also of Abusive Ghost Husbands fame) explode heads with magic. Which are all fine, fine things, to be sure, and perfectly acceptable reasons to go see a movie.
There were a lot of things I liked about HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS. I liked that everyone at least attempted some sort of general European accent, except for the title characters. I liked that Hansel's entire weakness is that he has diabetes, and has to stop kicking ass every couple hours to give himself a shot. I liked the costume design, and that the witches all looked very unique, but not silly or cartoony. I liked the overwhelming Tarantino-ness (although let it be said that I am not a Tarantino fan) of all the kills (because apparently zapping someone with magic isn't ridiculous enough on its own, people need to actually explode like water balloons filled with red corn syrup). I liked the sheer cheesiness and half-assedness of the obligatory romantic plotline. For most of the movie I was barking out laughter and flapping my hands incredulously like a child. Generally speaking, I enjoyed this movie to the point of screamy, breathless giggles.
The only thing I didn't like, funnily enough, was Gretel. Or, you know, approximately 50% of HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.
Okay, so I wasn't exactly expecting anything thoughtful or progressive from this movie, and I wasn't expecting to see "FEMINISM!" spelled out in fireworks in every frame. This is a movie that is ENTIRELY ABOUT SHOOTING WITCHES WITH A BIG STUPID GUN UNTIL THEY LITERALLY EXPLODE, it's not exactly a thinking man's film. I mean, the director didn't even care enough to give the role of Hansel to Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester on Supernatural, who no offense to Jeremy Renner would have done way better and had way more fun with it).
He's still pretty upset about it.
But I at least expected Gretel to be able to hold her own. Apparently I was asking too much.
The first half hour (or so) gives you the standard fairytale; Hansel and Gretel get left in the woods (for some reason), come across a candy house, eat the candy house (because they're stupid kids who have never been told about paedophiles), get trapped by a witch, and commit their first witchicide by shoving the witch into her own oven. Then we get a very stylish and speedy montage explaining that HANSEL AND GRETEL have been totally bad-ass WITCH HUNTERS ever since.
We are then introduced to a nice little village full of Fachwerkhausen (which I squealed at, because I love Fachwerkhausen). The mayor of said village announces that he has hired HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS to hunt witches and bring back kidnapped children, not necessarily in that order. The sheriff, understandably, takes issue with this, and Gretel asserts her dominance.
With her face.
Basically, we are given to understand that it's HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, and not, say, HANSEL AND HIS LOVELY ASSISTANT GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, or even perhaps HANSEL: WITCH HUNTER AND HIS ANNOYING KID SISTER GRETEL, ISN'T SHE ADORABLE. It's the two of them, it's always been the two of them, and we are assured that Gretel is perfectly self-sufficient and just as adept at this whole witch-hunting business as her brother.
Which turns out to be almost entirely untrue when you actually see Gretel fighting a witch. For having spent a full quarter (and then some) of the movie assuring you that she's more than qualified to handle herself, Gretel sure gets her ass handed to her a lot, by nearly every adversary she faces.
Let's take inventory here:
-She spends most of the movie either on the ground, screaming "HANSEL", getting hit/kicked in the face, unconscious, being held against her will, being choked, or some combination of the above.
-She lets herself get captured and thrown into a cage, which, aside from being total rookie mistakes for a seasoned witch hunter, puts her on the same vulnerability level as the frightened children in the other cages.
-Rather than try to escape, she just. . . stays in the cage. And cries.
-When a troll grabs her (and she has mentioned killing trolls before) and takes her somewhere, she just goes with him. And does what he asks. And doesn't try to escape.
-The whole reason Gretel even matters in this story is an accident of birth. She has something, that she can't control, which is necessary to the plot. That's it.
-When she gets attacked by a group of perfectly mortal men, she barely fights back.
-For the climax of the movie, she is chained to a rock (which she, AGAIN, LETS HAPPEN) shouting "HANSEL, HANSEL" until someone comes and unlocks one of her cuffs, and then she just kind of stands there, swings weakly, and gets punched a lot.
There's also this lovely little scene where Gretel gets knocked out, and a teenage boy takes her unconscious body to his room, and not only draws quite detailed pictures of her, but also gropes her chest. HAHA! HOW CHARMINGLY AWKWARD AND RELATABLE AND NOT AT ALL DISTURBING! TEENAGE BOYS, AM I RIGHT? And she CATCHES HIM DOING IT, and for some reason, he's still alive at the end of the movie. Whatever.
I don't get it. Why waste all this time assuring us what a capable, fiery powerhouse this chick is, if you're just going to immediately undo all of it? Why even bother? If you want to make a stupid action movie, what sense does it even make to turn your heroine into one of your weakest characters? Why not just leave her as she is? How does that make your movie any better? I really just don't get it.
Not to mention, IT'S BORING. The whole rescue-the-princess, feisty-girl-who-still-needs-a-man's-help-to-get-out-of-every-jam thing? It's been done to death, AND IT'S NOT EVEN RELEVANT ANYMORE! Even Disney knows better. It's OLD. We want something BETTER, something NEW, something we can ACTUALLY RELATE TO.
(Although, to be perfectly honest, I knew there was going to be a problem as soon as I saw she was wearing a leather bodice. Guess what? Bodices, particularly LEATHER ones, are not comfortable. You can't run in them, you can't fight in them, you certainly can't climb trees in them. In fact, you really can't do much of anything in them except sit quietly somewhere and try not to think about how much you resemble a tube steak.
You know who wouldn't wear a restricting leather bodice? Gretel. Who is also wearing pants (which was generally frowned upon at the time), and therefore obviously going with function over acceptable style, but apparently draws the line at a full range of torso motion. Meanwhile, Hansel's over here wearing chaps and a sleeveless vest so he can shoot better and he's still a lousy shot, what's the deal with that.
Male costume designers and directors of period action movies, take a note: BODICES AND CORSETS ARE NOT ACTIVEWEAR. Do not put your heroine in pants and also a bodice. I don't care if their boobs look better, just don't do it. Put them in a regular shirt. If you put your heroine in a bodice, you better put some petticoats and an overdress on her and call that girl a carriage, because she is not running anywhere anytime soon.)
I wanted to love Gretel. I was so excited that we were gonna finally have a sexy, bad-ass, don't-take-shit-from-anyone firecracker heroine who handled her business and didn't need a man to save her. Instead, what we got was the same tired old weepy, wimpy damsel-in-distress, who couldn't even break out of a cage without help from her beefy male counterpart. And I cannot help but feel personally insulted. I feel like I was tricked out of half of the movie, as well as ridiculed.
Look, okay, bottom line: if you want a silly action movie that doesn't have much plot, that doesn't make you any more thoughtful or any better of a person, but is still fun to watch with friends, I enthusiastically endorse this movie! It's good campy fun. Famke Janssen is great, Jeremy Renner is unintentionally hilarious. It's minimally scary, and the gore quotient is so unrealistic as to be laughable. This is just a fun movie, and I did really enjoy it. So if you haven't seen it yet, and it sounds like your thing, you really should.
Just don't expect to root for Gretel. At the end of the day, it would have been better as just HANSEL: WITCH HUNTER.
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