Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

½ Pipe out of 4

Remember Van Helsing? Or The Brothers Grimm? Well Hansel & Gretel is a horrible mixture of the two with the vampires of Van Helsing and the pair of bounty hunters in The Brothers Grimm. To those who say that Van Helsing and The Brothers Grimm by themselves are bad movies, I am not one to disagree but Hansel & Gretel make them look like Oscar Nominees. Unlike the other two films the plot is absolutely horrible and not worth the watch. There is no character development while things move way to fast to actually understand what is happening. The love story that is supposed to develop between two of the main characters is only explained by the fact that one save the other’s life and therefore she is in love with him. There is more sexual chemistry between Hansel and Gretel than this love connection. A scene actually develops so that it looks as if Hansel and Gretel are going start making out. This scene could have been used to push forward the romance so the inevitable conclusion would be more believable but they chose to give it to a brother and sister. This film is the reason why January is the movie dump, demonstrating poor decisions in the movie making process and in order to get it out they release in the industry crapper. Gemma Arterton who plays Gretel has a hard time maintaining one accent and switches between old time and modern day, Renner at least maintained the consistency of the modern day accent instead of switching between that and old timey. From the moment Jeremy Renner enters the screen as Hansel to save a false witch, it is evident that he does not care about this film and does not put his best foot forward. The best parts of the film are just Renner's apparent disregard which comes across as the equivalent of a confused audience member, of which there were many.