The Way Too Dark, Dingy, And Disorienting HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS 

(Dir. Tommy Wirkola, 2013)

Warning: This review may contain Spoilers!

From the same lack of inspiration that brought you ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER comes this muddled mixture of the action genre with fairy tale mythology that, of course, is available as an IMAX 3D experience. I so wish I had the option of seeing a 2D advance screening, but I had to don the glasses and endure imagery that was way too dark, dingy, with tons of disorienting pans.

The story and the characters are just as dismal. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton (best known for QUANTUM OF SOLACE and TAMARA DREW so she’s not very well known) are the title characters who we first meet as children (Cedric Eich and Alea Sophia Boudodimos respectively) going through the motions of the original Brothers Grimm tale.

After that cold opening, a cardboard-looking animated title sequence filled with fiery in-your-face CGI brings us up to speed that Hansel and his sister Gretel grow up to take on witch hunting full-time, with newspaper headlines praising their work along the way.

With anachronistic American accents, Renner and Arterton show up in a small German village to save a young woman (Pihla Viitala) suspected of being a witch from being burnt to death. Anyone who’s seen MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL will know how villagers in Medieval times react to possible witches, and these folks are especially riled up as they are goaded on by the evil Sherriff Berringer (Peter Stormare – no stranger to this setting as he was in Terry Gilliam’s THE BROTHERS GRIMM).

Arterton head butts Stormare, Viitala is freed, and the brother-sister duo start to investigate the abduction of several children from the town by witches. This plot serves just as a clothesline to hang together a bunch of annoyingly quick cut fight scenes that look terrible and fail to deliver any excitement.

Famke Janssen plays the real villain of a sorceress who can morph her face from a normal human look to a bad witch make-up job (go from zero to witch in 10 seconds?) since Stormare gets his head stomped on by what turns out to be a friendly troll in one of the film’s many gratuitous gore shots.

Of all the failed factors that make up this movie – the awful screenplay, the tedious tone, the overwrought score by Atli Örvarsson (IRON MAN), the unconvincing acting, the poorly plotted procedural, the clunky humor, and the addition of heavy artillery for the machine gun fire ‘em up finale – the only commendable factor present is that it’s only 88 minutes long.

More later...

The Terry Gilliam Repertory Role Call 1977-2009

In anticipation of the new Terry Gilliam film THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS opening wide this Friday here's a listing of Gilliam's stupendous stock company. This is excluding the Monty Python films, because Gilliam only co-directed one of them (MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL). So let's get right to it:

Jeff Bridges (THE FISHER KING, TIDELAND) 7 years before "The Dude", Bridges abided as pony-tailed radio shock jock Jack Lucas who finds redemption by way of a crazy homeless Robin Williams (see end of list). Bridges' fate was less rosy in TIDELAND (2005) - he plays a crusty old rocker reminiscent of Kris Kristopherson (a foreshadowing of CRAZY HEART?) who dies of a heroin overdose and spends most of the film as a rotting corpse sitting upright in a chair in a rustic farmhouse. Also notable: Bridges narrated the excellent heartbreaking documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA that focused on Gilliam's aborted 2000 production of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE.

Jim Broadbent (TIME BANDITS [1981], BRAZIL [1985]) The small but juicy role of a sleazy Compere of the game show "Your Money Or Your Life" was one of Broadbent's first film roles. He appeared again in Gilliam's next film, the bizarre but brilliant BRAZIL, as Dr. Jaffe - a plastic surgeon for one of the other notable cast members on this list (Hint: skip ahead 2).


Winston Dennis (TIME BANDITS, BRAZIL, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN 1988) A couple of bit parts as "Bull-headed Warrior" who battled King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) in TIME BANDITS and "Samurai Warrior" in BRAZIL led to an actual character name for Dennis, actually 2, Bill/Albrecht, an intertwined duo in Gilliam's overblown but still incredibly charming epic comedy: THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988).

Johnny Depp (FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, ) A Hunter S. Thompson adaptation is not a characteristic project for the dogged director, but with the demented Depp as the Gonzo journalist, Gilliam found his fantasist footing in the trippy terrain. Depp lent a hand famously filling in for Heath Ledger as "Imaginarium Tony #1" in the upcoming IMAGINARIUM... and is slated to be Sancho Panza (a role he was unable to complete in 2000) in THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2011). Barring any unforeseen incident, mind you.

Katherine Helmond (TIME BANDITS, BRAZIL, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS)

While she's best known for her US television sitcom work on Soap, Who's The Boss, and Everybody Loves Raymond, Helmond has an almost alternate reality film career in the alternate realities of Gilliam. 

In TIME BANDITS she's fittingly named Mrs. Ogre as she's the wife of "Winston the Ogre" (Peter Vaughan), in BRAZIL she's Ida Lowry - the mother of protagonist Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), and in FEAR AND LOATHING... she's "Desk Clerk at Mint Hotel" - a study in uncomfortable disapproving scowling. You'd think she'd be used to Gilliam's grotesqueries by that point.

Ian Holm (TIME BANDITS, BRAZIL) To go from the legendary Napoleon to the lowly office boss Mr. M. Kurtzman in just a few years is quite a demotion. And perhaps it's adding insult to injury that neither role has any positive light shed on them but Holm puts in perfect performances that actually provoke sympathy. Incidentally Holm would go on to portray Napoleon again in THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES (2001).

Michael Jeter (THE FISHER KING, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS)



Jeter died in 2003 leaving behind an eclectic career that stretched from musical theater to television comedy to the silver screen and back again. His parts in 2 of Gilliam's finest films as "Homeless cabaret singer" and "L. Ron Bumquist" are as memorable as character acting can be - especially when he belts out a medley of show tunes in drag to Amanda Plummer in THE FISHER KING.

Simon Jones (BRAZIL, TWELVE MONKEYS) These are pretty blink and miss them cameos (as an "Arrest Official" and "Zoologist" respectively) from Python pal Jones best known as Arthur Dent on the BBC TV version of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (1981). 

Heath Ledger (THE BROTHERS GRIMM, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS) Of course, the tragic death of Heath Ledger in 2008 deprived the world of an amazing young talent, but a blossoming Gilliam leading man is how he'll remain frozen in time as "Tony" in his last film: THE IMAGINARIUM... Ledger was reported as being close to Gilliam beginning with their work on BROTHERS GRIMM, so it's not so far-fetched to imagine them collaborating often had he lived. 

Charles McKeown (TIME BANDITS, BRAZIL, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS)



McKeown has been on hand to fill in random bit player parts in these 4 films simply because he co-wrote them with Gilliam. His work as "Theater manager", Harvey Lime, Rupert/Adolphus, and "Fairground Inspector" may go majorly un-noticed but such a solid player should at least get a shout out from this blogger.


Christopher Meloni (TWELVE MONKEYS, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS) Before he was Detective Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, or criminal Chris Keller on Oz for that matter, Meloni played Lt. Halperin in TWELVE MONKEYS then "Sven, Clerk at Flamingo Hotel" in FEAR AND LOATHING...