No, just, no

Rating: 2/10 (9 March 2013)

Recently, we've become accustomed to seeing two types of fantasy romps – the darker ones such as 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and the less- serious, genre-mashup, particularly Timur Bembakatov's 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. Consequently, it's unsurprisingly that Hansel and Gretel would make it to the big-screen once more, however, with this film, they can't be said to fall into either category, but conversely, both. It's just unfortunate that the movie doesn't really work as either.
Diluted down to its basics, the story is something that would intrinsically appeal to a younger audience, due to its fairytale roots, but here it has been given a more 'grown-up' treatment which means brash swearing, nudity and of course, violence. Subsequently, this graphic content is done in too childish a manner to make the film an 'adult' one. At the same time, it attempts to maintain a dark and grim atmosphere to possibly scare viewers, which fails, incidentally. Then, on top of this, there are scenes intended to be ones of genuine emotion to make you empathise with the characters and also scenes that strive to parody the fantasy genre. All of these elements are things that might just work together, but here feel rather disjointed. Also, it's been said that to properly make a parody of something you need to truly love it, but here, such scenes feel quite crass.
I'm aware that this movie is not supposed to be a high-brow work of art, it's supposed to be a slice of enjoyable fantasy adventure, and don't get me wrong, I love a good fantasy romp as much as the next man (I even have a soft spot for 2004's 'Van Helsing') and often relish a nice dollop of violent (and somewhat silly) action, having thoroughly enjoyed Zack Snyder's adaptation of '300'. Yet, I'd struggle to relate this film to being anything remotely close to enjoyable; I frequently tried to enjoy this movie, but couldn't find any cause to, with my interest consistently drifting off.
The action scenes are remarkably unremarkable, with editing that mightn't be out of place in a Michael Bay actioner and overstuffed with flimsy CGI. The characters themselves are unengaging, with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arteton striding around with American accents that just confounded me, as other players such as Peter Stormare (who can do much better than this) have thick European accents. The creature make-up and design was nothing special and the ogre look unbelievably cheap. If you want to properly do fantasy creatures, just look at someone like Guillermo del Toro. But most significantly, the film was deathly dull, boring, and frankly, forgettable.