If Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is a bloody mess, at least it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The movie, directed by Tommy Wirkola, is what you’d expect from something called what it is: a revisionist fairy tale laced with action scenes and zombie-witch-horror-intestines. But it also includes little surprises that make it more palatable, and at a crisp 88 minutes, it is painless to digest. Let the interminable running times of epics (cue Lord of the Rings theme song) make way for Hansel’s short romp in the forest.
Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest, as per The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale, where they stumble upon a house made of candy and get invited inside, at which point they are almost eaten by a rabid witch. Thinking quickly, Gretel saves the day by pushing the witch into the fire. In my imagination, I had always seen the witch’s hut as an enlarged gingerbread house complete gum-drop doorknobs, a wafer roof, and frosty snow icing. In the movie, the house, designed by production designer Stephen Scott, looks like a demon mouth, with teethlike tombstone sculpted out of sugar and lollipops that are somehow menacing.
Flash forward a few years and Hansel and Gretel are full-time witch hunters, called upon to protect a vaguely Austrian village from a coven of witches who regularly prey on the townspeople. Said witches are a mess of prosthetics, black make-up and cut-glass cheekbones hatching plans to make all witches invincible. Quite cheesy.
Hansel is played by a bristling Jeremy Renner. In the Hurt Locker and The Town, Renner proved himself a serious dramatic actor, but he has since sold out to action movies (most recently, The Bourne Legacy and The Avengers.) He has the action type under control, always acting angry, suffering from major PTSD, andstraining his eyebrows to look heroic. Hansel’s chemistry with sister Gretel (the British rose Gemma Arterton) remains under-developed.
The movie has little else interesting to cover. The townhouses are a cliche of thatched roofs and carved banisters. Warriors fight with crossbows and automatic guns with no sense of history. Sometimes the anachronisms serve for comedic effect. It doesn’t actually matter though, because it runs less than an hour and a half so is short enough to satisfy with less. I’m sick and tired of being chained to the theater, forced to be exhausted by the imagination of sprawling movies. Hansel is just short enough to give a taste, a fine grab-bag of chintzy thrills and stifled laughs you can’t help but enjoy.