This fairytale turns out just a little grim First it was Snow White, then it was Disney’s fairytale characters with Once Upon A Time and the Grimm stories on TV, now it’s Hansel & Gretel. Yes, it’s official – fairytales are the new vampire films.

There has always been an inherent interest in the realm of the fantastical, and with technology meaning you can do pretty much anything these days – the possibilities of bringing mystical creatures to life are endless.

The trend is to make fairytale characters closer to superheroes – in fact you could argue they were the original heroes and villains of literature, so not that much of a leap – taking their origins and twisting them into a contemporary interpretation, but keeping the “times of old” setting.

Hansel (Jeremy Renner) & Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are renowned across the land as being terribly handy at getting rid of witches, ever since their first encounter as children when they killed their first one, very much in keeping with the original fairytale.

They are now grown up, and travelling around generally being mean and moody and dispatching these evil creatures with a variety of weapons. For some reason they appear to be immune to magic.

They find themselves drawn to a village which is on the verge of being terrorised by a particularly powerful witch (Famke Janssen) and her plans to make her and her fellow evildoers immune to the only thing that truly can kill a witch – fire. The village has eerie reminiscences of the siblings’ past, and the secret to their immunity being their potential undoing.

For a film that promised to be rather enjoyable – two great leading actors, the success of Snow White & The Huntsmen, exciting looking set pieces, the overall film is very disappointing. The story is very thin and stretched out with barely time to fill in details.

The characters are badly drawn and clichéd and the two leads don’t really look like they are putting their all into the film, apart from running around a lot and pouting.

The script is terrible and there is unnecessary swearing and confusingly modern dialogue in an ancient setting. It could have been a lot better thought out and executed.

4/10

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Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here