Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After

From the series, "After Ever After," inspired (and hosted) by David Walliams' books. (Walliams also appears in each film.) Hansel and Gretel follows the two children after their escape from the witch. It shows the hilarious attempts of the witch and the evil stepmother to destroy Hansel and Gretel, complicated by a group of bumbling villagers and the witches' rather inept cat, Alan. It has a great cast and very clever writing, as well as charming settings and costumes. Make sure you watch all the way to the end! Daniel Rigby is especially funny as the hapless town jester who can't get his jokes right. Others in the series are all worth watching if you like humor and a little bit of fantasy: Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Hansel is black. Gretel is white. They have an evil gold-digging stepmother. The witch didn't actually die. Now there is a troll and a talking cat puppet. The villagers are ridiculously stupid. This is supposedly a sequel to the classic fairy tale. Like all bad sequels, the original gets rewritten. The dead witch is not actually dead. Also the production level is relatively bad. The witch looks bad and I don't mean deliberately ugly. Quite frankly, if they couldn't do a good troll, they should simply make him something else. There is no reason why he couldn't be a hunky woodsman. A hunky woodsman would make the final pairing all the more compelling and poetic. The reason why the black and white children is problematic is that the family unit is never explained. The audience doesn't have their backstory. This story seems intent on reworking the fairy tale but it does it badly.