Hansel & Gretel (2002)

Posted on May 26, 2004 under Fantasy, Kidvid |

Directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe
Written by Jonathan Bogner, Timothy Dolan, and Gary J. Tunnicliffe
Starring
- Taylor Momsen
- Jacob Smith
- Delta Burke
- Howie Mandel
- Alana Austin

I’m starting to suspect that Hollywood is scattered with day labor locations, where producers can cruise by first thing in the morning, see the third-string actors hanging out with nothing better to do, and pick them up for some low-profile work.

Don’t believe me? Check out this cast list: Gerald McRaney. Delta Burke. Howie Mandel. Lynn Redgrave. The voices of Tom Arnold, Bobcat Goldthwaite, and Sinbad. If that’s not a cheap day-labor cast, I don’t know what is. And as far as I can tell, they threw in the script for free.

First up: The framing device. There are these two kids, see, Andrew and Katie (Thomas and Dakota Fanning), who are having trouble getting to sleep. Katie can’t count sheep, see, because she’s afraid of sheep. Ha! (Despite the focus of the first thirty seconds of dialogue, sheep will never show up in this story.) Dad (Daniel Roebuck) comes in the room to read them a story and finds an unfamiliar old book on their bookshelf. But what the hey, he sits down, opens it up (without even glancing at the title), and starts reading (on the left-hand page).

Let’s get this clear. To my knowledge, there is exactly one movie that manages to pull off the “bedtime story” framing device: The Princess Bride. (If you were about to say Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, go sit in the corner.) And one of the things that makes is so successful is that it adds to the main story without distracting from it. I mean, what do we need to know about Fred Savage’s family? Here, though, the detail is clumsily spelled out that the mother of the family has passed on. Not only is this completely unnecessary information, but it certainly makes “Hansel & Gretel” a less than ideal choice for a bedtime story, especially if Dad expects to ever start dating again.

“Those pounds you lost, wife? I think I found ‘em.”

So. Long ago and far away, Hansel and Gretel (Jacob Smith and Taylor Momsen) are saddled with Delta Burke as their selfish stepmother Brunhilda. Not surprising, since her real-life husband Gerald McRaney is their father. (He’s also the only actor who affects even a vaguely Germanic lilt to his diction, which makes it seem like he thinks he’s in a different movie than everyone else.) What he doesn’t know is that she only married into his life of abject poverty because of the gold filigreed locket he has, bearing the picture of his first wife; it’s apparently valuable enough to give her “the life she deserves.” Yeah, marrying him and sharing his bed for who knows how long is a much better plan than simple theft.

So. When Father decides to take the locket to the city to sell for their subsistence, she manages to swipe it from him before he gets out the door. Then, just to make her plan a little more cumbersome, she decides to lead the children out and get them lost in the woods so that when Father comes back looking for the locket, he’ll be too busy searching for his children to bother tracking her down.

Off she leads them, then, to the edge of the Magic Forest. Hansel, though, is a clever young lad, and marks their path with… stones. The shiny stones that Dad picks up for him in his travels. When the trio reaches the clearly-marked edge of the Magic Forest, Hansel thinks he’s got a clearly marked path back home, until Brunhilda gleefully hands him the stones that she’s been picking up as quickly as he’s been dropping them. Then she chases them off into the foggy depths of the forest.

Yes, I know, the kids use pebbles in the original (Grimm) version of the folktale as their first device for getting home; it’s only on their second outing into the woods that they’re forced to use breadcrumbs, with the results that we’ve all come to know and love. But who would ever write a version of Hansel & Gretel with no breadcrumbs at all? Look way, up, where I’ve listed “Written by.” That’s who.

“Are you SURE this is the way to our new agent’s house?”

So. By my standards, there are two essential elements to any version of “Hansel & Gretel”: The breadcrumbs, and the witch with the edible house. We’ve already botched the first one, and I swear, it’ll be so long before we encounter the second that you’ll start to wonder if it’s been jettisonned too. Because there’s this whole middle section of the movie to fill, and what did some genius decide was the perfect filler?

Howie Mandel.

That is, Howie Mandel as the Sandman, with a shaven head, a goatee, pseudo-Persian clothes, and bunny slippers. Oh, and a lisp. The kids, having wandered all day, meet up with him at nightfall just as he’s about to make his rounds putting the world’s children to sleep, and he finds them a safe place to spend the night and promises to come back in the morning.

Unfortunately, he keeps his promise. That’s right, folks, we’ve got plenty of Howie Mandel to come, as he lisps his motormouth patter about New York timeshares and studying kung fu online. I’ve got two hypotheses, and neither one is reassuring: Either (a) someone gave Mandel permission to ignore the script and ad lib whatever “humorous” nonsequitur and anachronism came into his mind, or (b) someone managed to write a script that sounded exactly like Howie Mandel ad libbing.

So. The Sandman’s back first thing the next day, and spends the entire day trying to lead two tired and hungry urchins out of the forest. See, he doesn’t know how to get out either! He’s lost, and won’t admit it! It’s comedy! Really! Lisp a little more for us, Howie! We love it!

At the end of this next day, he has to leave them just as they reach a sign for All U Can Eat Food. The children follow the signs on their own, only to discover that they’ve been put there by a troll. And not just any troll — a balding, flatulent, couch-potato troll who speaks with the voice of Bobcat Goldthwaite, thus proving the notion that anything seems like an improvement after Howie Mandel leaves. He chains them up, adding to his collection which already includes a Wood Faerie (Alana Austin), which is apparently Magic Forestese for “vaguely magical, glitter-covered uppity skank.” Fortunately (uh huh), the troll is too busy watching TV to eat the kids during the night, which means that the Sandman can come by in the morning and rescue the kids by putting the troll to sleep. The kids also insist that he rescue the Wood Faerie, mostly because Howie Mandel lisping by himself isn’t nearly as excruciating as Howie Mandel consistently losing a battle of wits to a “whatEVER” girl.

Are you ready for this next stunning plot development? They spend ANOTHER WHOLE DAY wandering around the forest, looking for a way out or some food or a stout limb with which to beat the director to death. (Wait, sorry, that was me.) And at nightfall once again, the Sandman and the Wood Faerie fight over who’s stupider, then he leaves for his appointed rounds, and the Wood Faerie wanders away to look for some food. Gee, that might be a really pressing matter, seeing as we’re talking about two kids who have had no food for three full days while spending all their daylight hours marching through underbrush.

Only one’s officially a fairy, but they’re both pretty fey if you ask me.

But wait! Did I promise you a witch? Why so I did! This particular witch (Lynn Redgrave) has been watching the kids through her magic whatever ever since they entered the forest, and now decides to use a magical windstorm to separate them from the Wood Faerie so she can lure them to her house. (Were it me, I would have done that like two days earlier, but maybe cannibal witches like the taste of advanced ketosis.) So when morning comes (is it just me, or is this entire story taking place on some parallel Earth with a two-hour planetary rotation?), she entices them with delicious smells to the traditional gumdrop-and-lollipop house (sponsored by Nestle, as the scattered Butterfinger and Crunch bars will attest).

Now. If you’ve been wondering how this movie managed to avoid my “Cold” rating, the answer is that Lynn Redgrave is the sole shining spot in the entire production. We first meet her as a kindly, nearsighted grandmother-type who occasionally reveals her true nature by licking her fingers, rolling her eyes in anticipation… Yes, her performance is pure ham, but it’s good, solid ham, as opposed to just about everyone else in the cast (Howie, I’m looking at you), who seem to be more akin to a food item that has to be labelled “ham and water product” by law.

The kids come in and gorge themselves until they can’t move anymore (no mention of the severe gastric distress that would result from severely undernourished children stuffing themselves with junk food), then go to sleep on cutesy pink beds… and wake up on dirty straw!

You know the drill. A montage of Gretel’s forced cooking follows, as the caged Hansel is fattened for a feast. Meanwhile, the Sandman and the Wood Faerie now search for the lost children. (I would have laughed aloud if they had accidentally ran across the way out of the forest — “Great, now we find it!” — but no such wit is forthcoming.) The time scheme is more than a little vague here, especially as we’ve become used to a day-and-night cycle that alternates roughly every ten minutes, but the best I can tell, Hansel packs on an extra forty pounds in the course of one day.

“Hansel! I think I can see the closing credits from here!”

When the witch pulls out her human-sized pot, you know that the end is near. Sorta. Of course, when she gets in to check the size, Gretel is shooed to the other side of the room, so the actual knocking-into-the-fire part is actually accomplished by the Sandman and the Wood Faerie, who just happen to show up at the right moment. When you think about it, these kids have been entirely at the mercy of everyone else for the length of the movie; the last thing they actively did in their own interest was Hansel’s rock-dropping scheme. But I shouldn’t complain, because the movie’s almost over now, right?

Hah. Just as the least engaging family member at any gathering is the last one to leave, this movie can’t bring itself to just end without a meandering and painful winding-down. First the witch comes back out of the oven, a little charred and severely pissed; she’s dispatched yet again when Howie Mandel’s kung fu stunt double kicks a bucket of water at her head. (The witch’s pet raven, voiced by Sinbad, let Hansel in on witches’ dislike of water in return for a share of the vittles.) Then the kids get out of the house and run into their father, who’s been searching all over for them. Then the witch comes back out of the house as a cloud of really angry smoke, but gets blown away by the Wood Faerie’s pixie dust or somesuch. Then the raven drops the mother’s locket into the dad’s hand, so now they’ve got something to live on.

Then (yes, I swear, this is still ending) back in the framing story, the father finishes the book, kisses the kids goodnight, and tells them that their mom would be very proud of them. (Again, what possessed anyone to say, “It would make this movie so much more moving to mention in passing that the modern-day kids’ mother is dead”?) Then once Dad leaves the room, the two kids argue about whether the story was lame or not. (Guess which side I’m on.) Then their closet door rattles, and the Sandman comes into their room, along with the troll and the boogeyman. (I never mentioned the boogeyman. There was no reason to. He shows up for about ten seconds, long enough for Tom Arnold to pick up a paycheck for providing his voice.) Then Andrew tries to argue with them that they don’t exist. Then the Sandman wins the argument by tossing sleepy-sand into his face and, more gently, Katie’s. And then he tosses some at the camera.

If you think I’ve given you an accurate picture of how bad this movie is, you literally don’t know what you’re missing. For example, I left out the completely extraneous storyline of the stepmother, who gets lost in the woods herself; she shows up at the troll’s door not long after the kids escape, and proceeds to take over the troll’s life, making him into a browbeaten househusband. Boy, that’s just so funny. She never does manage to intersect with the main story again.

I also left out the sentence-level torture of the script. It’s bad enough that the main gist of the story shows such little thought, but the individual lines of dialogue sound like a bad brainstorming session of a group of drunk screenwriters who really, really meant to replace it with something better when they got sober but, damn, Monday morning came quicker than they expected. As often as possible, the characters spout some stupid and quickly dated pop-cultural reference; it just leaps from a Weakest Link reference to a Survivor reference to an Emeril Live reference to a pro-wrestling reference (did anyone really need to hear, “Can you smell what the Sandman is cooking?”).

“I took this part so my kids would stop asking me to babysit my grandchildren.”

And your last bit of torture: Even after the words “The End” blessedly appear on the screen, there’s that needle-dragged-across-an-LP sound (I’m sorry, but is any member of this movie’s target demographic even going to know what that sound is?), and we’re treated to a last pointless scene of the stepmother discovering the now-empty house of sweets, inviting herself in the front door, leaning out again, and delivering a witchy cackle.

Hear that sound like a twin-prop airplane as the closing credits roll? It’s the Grimm Brothers spinning in their graves.

Now, here’s the final jawdropper: My kids loved it. The nine-year-old, the six-year-old, the three-year-old… (Okay, the baby mostly drooled and crawled around the room.) They thought it was great, wacky entertainment.

You may think the moral of my story is that your appreciation of this movie all depends on being in the target demographic. It’s not. The moral is that I haven’t spent nearly enough time teaching my kids how to identify crap masquerading as entertainment.