Hansel and Gretel

Based on one of the Brothers Grimm's grimmest, this animated adaptation of James Marshall's 1990 “retold and illustrated” version of Hansel and Gretel is far more faithful to the original than, say, Marshall's Goldilocks and the Three Bears (VL-1/94). After famine strikes a poor woodcutter living with his wife and two titular children (in a characteristic touch of Marshallian humor, the woman is plus-size and constantly stuffing her face while simultaneously whining about the lack of food), the matriarch suggests a brutal solution that would warm the cockles of Swift's satirical heart: namely, take the tykes out to the deepest part of the forest and…um…leave ‘em. Ultimately stumbling upon a house that is literally—as today's teens would say—sweet, the kids are imprisoned by a witch intent upon fattening up Hansel for a little Hannibal Lecter-like snack. But thanks to a timely shove from Gretel on feast day, it's the witch's buns that end up in the oven, and the children return home with the hag's booty (precious jewels and coins) to find their father overjoyed and “the wife” dead. Ably narrated by Kathy Bates and featuring a whimsical score by Ernest V. Troost, this traditional telling fails to resolve the story's central problem for modern audiences (i.e., since the woodcutter agreed to abandon his children initially, the final hugs-and-kisses wrap-up seems undeserved), but that would essentially require rewriting the entire tale. Recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)