Wednesday 27 February 2013

Hansel And Gretel - Witch Hunters (15)

It never ceases to amaze me just how many people fail to spot the difference between a cinema and their living room.

It's like they are completely oblivious to the wider world. And by wider, I mean anywhere further than 6 inches from the head they so clearly have rammed up their own backsides. For any such people reading this, here's a handy guide:

Living room - here you can talk, munch crisps, fold empty crisp packets, chat some more, eat sweets from wrappers seemingly made from tissue paper and broken glass, check your phone, eat more crisps, more sweets and carry on chatting.

Cinema - it's bigger, darker, the screen is about 20 times the size of your TV and if you do any of the above you are going to seriously piss off the other patrons. Especially when they've paid a stupid amount of money to get the full cinematic experience.

And if you're not careful, one of those pissed-off patrons will berate you online. But I digress...

To be honest, my mood wasn't great as I entered the audio lottery that Screen 8 was to become to watch Hansel And Gretel - Witch Hunters. It seems that while Cineworld are happy to charge you a minor limb for the privilege of watching a film in their establishment, they'd rather you queued behind the snack-buying rabble who are going to do their best to ruin the film for you instead of them providing a lacky at the ticket desk.

I believe that's pretty much the definition of 'insult to injury'.

One's heart sank further when, having been briefly buoyed by trailers for Iron Man 3 and Man Of Steel (maybe Zack Snyder won't stuff this one up), the opening credits reveal not only MTV Films as one of the production companies, but Will Ferrell as a producer. Pretty much essential ingredients for any major shit sandwich I thought, sinking further into my seat as Mr Crisps finished his packet origami.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Now, I'm not claiming H&G is a great work of art here - you won't leave the cinema pondering the state of the human condition (well, you might, but that's down to the audience) - but what you have is dumb-as-nuts popcorn fodder that pisses about with steam punk and fairytale conventions and covers them in squish and blood.

The tale, such as it is, involves the titular siblings (played by Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner) taking to witch hunting having killed the one that trapped them in her house made of candy. They are hired by a village's mayor - against the wishes of the nasty sheriff - to hunt down the witch which is nabbing kiddies. From here things go bang, whizz, pop, squish, splat, snap, bang again and screech.

It's all good fun.

The cast do what they do well. Arterton is strangely sweet as a crossbow-toting girl on a mission, and while Renner seems slightly distant on-screen (can be explained away by his Hansel's childhood I guess...) he handles the multitude of fight scenes well.

Then there's Famke Janssen. Now, I've been a fan since her appearance in Star Trek (Next Gen, she's not that old) and I love her in the original X-Men trilogy, but here she somehow fails to conjure the necessary sinister evil madness and menace the role of grand queen majesty evil witch requires.

A quick aside - she makes a point of gloating to Gretel that her names are too many and wondrous for mere mortals to utter. IMDB says she's Muriel...

It feels like Janssen is happy for the effects and make-up to carry the load while she focuses on looking good in black. And she does. But she would. She'd look good in a bin bag. It just would have lifted several of the scenes if she'd at least hinted at the nasty within. Even when she's beating up H&G, it feels a bit, well, hollow.

Despite this slight drawback, the action scenes - while at times too blurred for you to work out who's what has just been smashed into the scenery - are brutal and fast-paced. The use of weapons and gadgets (they've invented the first tazer) is a good move, with bullets and arrows splintering doors, limbs and trees with gay abandon.

Even the more expositional sections of dialogue don't irk, but fill in the H&G back story without slowing the pace down too much.

And if 3D is your bag, it may well work. There are enough scenes that have clearly been designed for the requisite bits 'n' bobs to come flying out of the screen, even if some seem a bit muddied.

Apart from Thomas Mann (as geeky fanboy-turned-helper Ben), Derek Mears (Edward) and Pihla Viitala (as Mina), the supporting cast doesn't really have much to do. Peter Stormare is suitably panto-esque as the nasty Sheriff, but everyone else pretty much blends into the scenery (although not naming the Sheriff's hired goons is a nice touch). So, it's loud, dumb, brash nonsense. That's all good.

And it has a positive message. Hansel is diabetic. This came about from being force-fed sweeties by the nasty witch at the beginning. Get that? Too many sweeties = diabetes. A message wasted on the over-sized sweetie muncher with the noisy wrappers five seats to my right, but at least writer/director Tommy Wirkola tried.

But then there's the bad.

While it looks lush and bright, as mentioned earlier, the fight scenes are at times too dark and messy to make out what's going on. And while you expect the plot to be hokey, it creates big problems for itself.

Without giving anything away, there are two very clear moments when you wonder a) how Muriel (sorry, but the more I type that the dumber a name for an evil witch it is) didn't know and b) how Hansel failed to grasp what Muriel was yelling at him.

Oh, and don't start dwelling on H&G's grasp of geography because the whole thing will fall apart.
(I appreciate none of this makes much sense, but it will when you've seen the film. Go see, pop back, read again... see? You're welcome).

But oddly, none of that really bothered me.

In fact, the only thing that did bother me (and this I still can't rationalise given my own vocabulary) was the use of the 'f' word. It just didn't sit within the rest of the film - in fact, the first time it's uttered it sounds like it's being used by a child attempting to look grown up.

It's almost as if it was written into the dialogue to make the characters try and resonate with its target audience, and there was really no need.

I have no problem with the word, obviously, (I may be a hypocrite, but not on this subject), but it needs - as do all words used by scriptwriters - to sit snugly in the dialogue. It needs to be at home, fit snugly in the home it is given. But it doesn't.

As I may have pointed out many times, this film won't change your life. But if you park your brain in neutral, tolerate the inconsiderate nincompoops who seem to populate cinemas these days, don't ask too may questions, then Hansel And Gretel - Witch Hunters will help to pass a perfectly pleasant 90 minutes.

And it's already made a profit in America, so I'd be amazed if there wasn't a sequel.

2 comments:

  1. Good review Kahn. It's a total time-killer that's meant for the movies, and that's about it. Nothing special, but okay nonetheless.

    ReplyDelete