Hantel and Gresel

What exactly is the point of the story of Der Hanzel and Der Gretle? Is it a warning to adults that kids will push you into ovens? Is it advice to kids that if adults give you trouble, you should push them into ovens? Or is it that parents will never love you unless you kill old women?

For this movie, the moral is that evil women are clearly evil, and there is no ambiguity about who deserves to be punished. As you probably know, Hansel and Gretel grew up and somehow produced lots of weapons that should in no way exist at the time. Buy, hey, if they are going to be ignoring physics (equal and opposite reaction? sod that!), why stop there? This way being cool can outweight anything else. Which also applies to the witches, who are way powerful and should be running the country under an iron fist by this point! Frankly, the easy test for 'who is a witch' should be 'do they put up any kind of fight?'. And from this we get a lot of women throwing people around... but 'fortunately' we still get to have a 'damsel in distress' with Gretel. ...okay, I haven't mentioned the plot, but you could guess 'fight minor witches, mid movie battle, pause, then ramp up for huge battle at the end' and know exactly what happens.

Jeremy Renner seemed to be trying for a more comic turn, but just comes across as the nice side of bland. Gemma Arterton tries more than her character deserves. Famke Janssen is not trying at all. Which looks to be how most of the production team feels, and I can't say that Mike Elizalde was reaching far for his make up designs.

Within the 'want to be action' design, and short running time, this movie isn't leaving much of a mark.

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