A tad bit amusing...

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2013)

Hopefully this film will put an end to all these Hollywood fairy tale, live action monstrosities. From 'Mirror, Mirror' to 'Snow White and the Huntsman' from 'Grimm' to 'Once Upon A Time' it's really almost comical how every other studio in Hollywood will initiate similar projects once one studio decides to "greenlight" a certain genre of film. This film is certainty not the worst of the bunch; however, the mish-mash of fantasy, action adventure, shoot 'em up genres with questionable date appropriate weapon usage emphatically left me perplexed while watching this film.
His film stars Jeremy Renner as Hansel; coming off a hugely successful year with 'The Bourne Legacy' and 'The Avengers', I am positive that this film will not add much credibility to his acting body of work. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that in an interview at Cannes in 2011with Famke Janssen (the film's nemesis Muriel); she stated that she only took her role as the head witch because she had to pay off her mortgage.
Based on the children's tale in which two children, siblings (brother & sister) are abandoned in the forest by their father and then stumble upon a witch's cottage made totally of candy. Hansel and Gretel's reputation of conquering Witch Hunters is catapulted to legendary status as they successfully annihilate children abducting witches throughout all the lands. It seems that that the two siblings have become immune to witch's hexes, which is somehow associated to their initial witch eradication as children.
This is not an awful film, and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the incredibly violent, morbidly grotesque, and extremely graphic murder death sequences that this film excelled at generating. From decapitations to drawn and quartering, this film certainly wasted no expense to visually articulating its ghastly tale of the wickedly macabre. If more time could have been taken with regards to plot, script, and CGI effects; this film could have possibly been just a tab bit more palatable. However, with all that said, I am actually going to give a lukewarm recommendation to see that film. Definitely worth the price of renting, this film will easily appease those sick and twisted viewers out there who enjoy nothing more than a good 'tree trunk to the face' head explosion, or better yet, a horde of witches diced into bite size morsels as they are chased into a piano wire mesh entrapment. Again this is not award winning caliber acting; however, it is moderately amusing.
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