When approaching a movie entitled "Hansel & Gretel Get Baked," you aren't exactly shopping for next season's Oscar winner! At best, you hope for a good time. And I'll tell you what, I was so stoked and surprised by how enjoyable I found the start of this experience. The opening third of the movie expertly combines stoner humor, skewed fairy tale lore, and over-the-top horror comedy. The screenplay is unexpectedly clever (silly, too, but enjoyably so) and I thought this might be a terrific sleeper surprise. Unfortunately, though, this delicate balance of creativity soon gives way to much less inspired action mayhem. Within a few scenes, the film all but forgoes the fairy tale parallel and drops the delightful stoner angle. Instead it focuses on its most generic element and becomes a rather toothless horror trifle with a witch and her zombie minions battling the young protagonists. Even this might be sufficient if it was super funny or unusual, but it simply isn't. In short, a potentially good movie loses its way and never really recovers.Molly Quinn (Castle) and Michael Welch play siblings Hansel and Gretel as typical over-privileged suburban teens. Quinn and her boyfriend Ashton (a very funny Andrew James Allen) are enjoying a leisurely day of smoking. When their stash runs dry, he heads over to the home of a local Pasadena purveyor with a new strain of Black Forest weed. The kindly old lady doing the selling (Lara Flynn Boyle) may not be an ordinary drug dealer, though. Something supernatural is afoot and her dealings with Ashton are appropriately macabre, sufficiently gory, and quite amusing. I LOVED the movie up until this point. From here on out, though, the screenplay just shuttles a variety of characters off to the house to be dispatched in different ways. We are no longer even trying to be clever or funny, the lightly comic horror elements are supposed to carry the rest of the movie. Even Hansel and Gretel share relatively little screen time. He's just set up to be another clueless victim instead of a resourceful partner.
Lara Flynn Boyle (looking a little worse for wear due to plastic surgery) embraces the lunacy of the movie and turns in a nice performance as the witch. Quinn is appealing enough in an underwritten role. Poor Michael Welch barely even registers, once again due to an undeveloped screenplay. And if you're a Cary Elwes fan (his name is featured prominently on the DVD/Blu-ray cover), he's sticks around for less than two minutes. I'm going to say it again. There is a good idea behind "Hansel & Gretel Get Baked." But after a strong start, no one knew where to take that idea. After a great twenty minute introduction, the movie embraces a ordinariness that is disappointing. 4 stars (for twenty minutes), 2 stars (for the other hour plus). KGHarris, 6/13.
(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and characters. If you're the kind of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then this is not it! Instead, I'd encourage you to skip down to the last three paragraphs for my final assessment. If, however, you're accepting of a few modest hints at `things to come,' then read on ...)
Gretel Jaeger (played by the comely Molly Quinn) loves Ashton (Andrew James Allen). It's a perfect young love. As our story opens, we find them sharing a joint in Gretel's bedroom; it's a lovely bit of a new, intense marijuana strain called "Black Forest." Once they run out, Gretel sends Ashton out into the world erm, well, the streets for some more. When her stoner boyfriend never returns, Gretel takes it on her own to investigate, much to the chagrin of her older brother, Hansel (Michael Welch). But before it's all over, they'll have to join forces to take down one sweet little ol' lady, Agnes (Lara Flynn Boyle), who's intent on sucking the life force out of both of them!
No doubt, you already know the story of Hansel and Gretel. What the participants here apparently intended to do as best as I can surmise is re-tell it with a contemporary, urban slant. Instead of Germany, you have the L.A. suburbs. Instead of a witch, you have a seductive old temptress. Instead of a gingerbread house in the forest, you have a posh two-story dwelling in a cul de sac. You get the idea. The problem is ... is that enough?
Certain, one would think that even a modestly cautionary attempt to `update' a classic tale would involve some measure of modern message, as well, but, for all its efforts, GET BAKED ends up being nothing more than ... well ... a modestly cautionary attempt to `update' a classic tale. It's plenty stylish and all, just as it's given the proper urban sensibilities. The problem is there's a heavy strain of humor injected unevenly into the production, starting with the title, then the opening sequence, and then perhaps one of the cleverest opening credits I've seen in some time. I'd be hard-pressed to deny that there's an honest attempt at humor here; it just disappears and re-appears with no appreciable frequency that I'm really not convinced it was intended.
I have no problem with the modern spin on old stories. In fact, I think it can be a mighty nice way to revisit some of those messages we're all given as kids don't take candy from strangers, don't go out exploring in the forest all by yourself, don't succumb to witches and I can appreciate any writer's attempt to liven up the source material with more than a few chuckles here and there. Still, BAKED feels half-cooked, and methinks the script could've used a few more minutes in the oven before putting it up there on the silver screen.
HANSEL & GRETEL GET BAKED is produced by Kerry Kimmel & Pollack, Dark Highway Films (II), and Uptik Entertainment. DVD distribution is being handled by New Video under its Tribeca Film imprint. As for the technical specifications, it looks and sounds about as well as any major motion picture does these days; there's some nice cinematography, and it's all given a wondrously stylish look, even in its darkest corners. Sadly, there are no special features to speak of; I would've liked to have known in the very least whether the creative folks intended this as a serious horror film or a horror parody because, for the life of me, I couldn't say for sure.
RECOMMENDED. HANSEL & GRETEL GET BAKED is a mixed bag of effective and ineffective bits, mostly thrown into chaos by no single guiding theme: is this meant to serve as parody or satire of the classic fable OR did they intend this to be a legitimate horror film? It's far too tame to be a legitimate horror film, and it's far too unfunny to feel like an honest attempt at parody or satire. Instead, you get maybe what you expected a modern day fractured fairy tale for the medicinally light-headed or an audience better known as `Judd Apatow's desired demographic,' but this is far short of the lunacy they've come to expect. Also, David Tillman's sometimes tired screenplay borrows liberally from other fairy tales and even mythology to the point where methinks not even he was entirely certain what it was all going to look like in the end.
In the interests of fairness, I'm pleased to disclose that the fine folks at New Video provided me with an advance DVD copy of HANSEL & GRETEL GET BAKED by request for the expressed purposes of completing this review.
Buy Hansel & Gretel Get Baked (2013) Now
A fun flick with some talented actors. Seen it twice so far and will see a few more times. You must be comfortable watching people high as kites though!I hadn't realized this was a Tribeca film when I purchased it. It definitely surpassed my expectations. It does have some odd points, but I found it a rather clever interpretation of the Hansel and Gretel story. I definitely plan on watching it again.
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