Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Review

Classic tale, boring twist----Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton kill a witch in Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters

                Well...it's been nice knowing you, Jeremy Renner. You were a good actor up until the film (or nap as most may call it) that was The Bourne Legacy and you have officially destroyed your career with Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Don't worry---you're on the same boat as everyone else who appeared in this self indulgent, boring attempt to update the Grimm Brothers classic. Everyone in this film embarrasses themselves over and over again. It's not even that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an awful or self indulgent movie (although it is those things in spades.) Rather---it's that the film is so boring and dumb that while watching it---I was losing brain cells by the minute.

                  The film stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as Hansel and Gretel. You know the beginning of the story. Now they're F-word throwing, self conceded witch hunters. And yes...they kill witches in many different ways (none of them any clever or fun.) There's really no need to go into the rest of the plot. Famke Janssen plays a witch who they must kill and that's all I'm going to bother to write on the plot.

                   Renner and Arterton don't even attempt to be good while Janssen gives it the old college try and fails. The film is just the same thing told over and over again. It's not even like 2008's Vantage Point where the audience at least gets something a little different each time. This is a movie that makes no attempt to do anything different from scene to scene. That's kind of sad, too because writer-director Tommy Wirkola previously did two very fun movies. He did Dead Snow and Kill Buljo which were both a blast. Here---it's as if he thought because this had not been done before---it was automatically cool. Not the case. This is not only not cool at all but it also is amazingly cliche. Sure...this plot has never been done before but everyone in the audience knows the story arc and exactly where it is going.

                  The ending sets up for a sequel which I, for one, will be tempted to skip. This is coming from the guy who sees every movie he possibly can. Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters is in its own special class of awful. Of the three unbearable new releases to come out this weekend...this takes the cake.

(0 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong fantasy horror violence and gore, brief sexuality/nudity and language)