Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) - Review

Tongue firmly burrowed in cheek

Aye yie yie... what are you coming to, Hollywood?  After having watched Jack the Giant Slayer just a few days prior to this one, I went in expecting the worst.  "Oh great, another boring, poorly paced mess that takes itself too seriously".  Well luckily for me, none of those things apply to Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

While not the cinematic classic you may expect from such a sophisticated title, this movie, while admittedly low-budget, is much, MUCH more fun than it really has any right to be.  Especially considering it comes from the oft-hated (for good reason) "adultified Grimm fairy tales".

I thought Hawkeye was the one that used a bow?

Everyone knows the story of Hansel and Gretel, but what you may not know is that after the incident in the forest, they decided to hunt witches professionally with guns and crossbows!  The movie does a good job establishing the duo's teamwork skills and backstory in remarkably little time; this is actually a really well-paced movie.  It's quite short, and cramming as much as possible into it actually benefits this movie quite a lot; it doesn't leave time for things to get boring at any point, really.

Oh it's pulpy, sure, and it's stupid.  But it has a self-awareness that some of the other films like this like such as The Brothers Grimm and Jack the Giant Slayer.  As of this review I haven't seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but I would suspect it fares about as well as the two aforementioned flops.

At least this movie knows what it wants to be, with no illusions of being more than it is.  And what it is is a movie called Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.  And that's enough for me.