Secret Magic Control Agency
Directed by Aleksey Tsitsilin
Produced by Sergey Selyanov (ru), Vladimir Nikolaev (ru), Sasha Shapiro
Written by Analisa LaBianco, Vladimir Nikolaev, Jeffery Spencer, Aleksey Tsitsilin, Alexey Zamyslov
Based on Gretel and Hansel by Brothers Grimm
Starring Nicholas Corda, Sylvana Joyce, Alyson Rosenfeld, Courtney Shaw, Erica Schroeder, Marc Thompson
Music by Gabriel Hays
Edited by Aleksey Tsitsilin
Production companies: Wizart Animation, CTB Film Company, QED International
Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing (Russia), Netflix (International)
I pretty much ignored Secret Magic Control Agency for quite a while. There have been several movies in recent years that featured the Grimm Brothers’ characters Gretel and Hansel, and they have been uniformly dreadful. The worst one tried tarting the rotund little German kinders with the inexplicable Swedish accents (They always seemed to turn every statement into an interrogative by adding “jah?” at the end. Annoying as hell.) into high tech super-spy magical beast fighters. The fat little Swedes weren’t as bad. At least they were edible.
Hollywood loves to do things like that with fairy tale and other mythical characters, and it almost never works. (One happy exception is Arthur Christmas, in which, amongst other things, Santa’s Sleigh is now a red and white version of the USS Enterprise). And while having unknowns as the voice cast isn’t necessarily a bad thing, is it even LEGAL to make an animated feature without a cast-off from Saturday Night Live or the Jon Stewart show?
I was annoyed at Netflix because the last two pilots for TV series I watched showed all sorts of promise, but when I glanced at the reviews to see what became of them, one turned into a muddled and inchoate remake of Lost, and the other, while universally praised by critics, was canceled and left to die following a cliff hanger ending to season three. No, not The Expanse. Amazon Prime rescued the best SF show in a generation from the incompetent SyFy network. Travelers, that one was called. So I wanted a movie, preferably something light as we dealt with the worst heat wave in our history.
OK, dumb and unpromising animation movie it is!
As I queue it up, the title struck me. “Control Agency”? Would the siblings be fighting that leading cause of misspelled words in American high schools in the 1960s, KAOS? It turned out that wasn’t the case, but you could see Maxwell Smart’s work place from there.
I found myself chuckling at the opening sequence. A big double door, stained glass, shows a mighty regal figure, a true behemoth of a king, splendidly astride a preposterously small horse. Really, I was surprised the poor thing’s tongue wasn’t sticking straight out, flapping like a wind sock under the burden. The doors are pulled open, and there’s the king himself, all four foot zilch and 250 pounds of him. Obviously royal license applies to portraiture in this world.
We meet Gretel first, which is fitting. (The story’s original name is Gretel & Hansel). She’s a secret agent for Control (the 99th?) and full of derring-do, resolve, competence and confidence. Superficially, at least. Hansel is the dissolute brother, a fake magician (in a world of magic!) and, not to put too fine a point on it, a con artist. He has lots of flash and panache, but a moral vacuum and untrustworthy. On the surface.
While most of the other characters are about what you would expect in a cartoon, those two turn out to be amazingly complex and well-rounded characters, with complicated backstories, particularly with one another. This adds considerable heft to what otherwise is an unpretentious children’s story.
One exception amongst the supporting characters is Baba Yaga. This is the old Baba Yaga, the demonic witch who lived in a hutch that strode about on chicken legs and she flew about in a mortar, “curdling mother’s milk and causing cats to scream in the night.” This is the sly, evil witch of the old legends, and like the complexity of the two characters (who are actually transformed to children for much of the movie, although retaining their adult minds), a pleasant surprise for a kids’ show.
A lot of animated movies meant for kids try to broaden their appeal to adults with innuendo and references to pop culture, but not this one: it depends on actual adult interactions to broaden appeal, and a good deal of honest, straightforward comedy.
The animation is excellent, the art beautiful.
I was surprised to learn after that this was wholly a Russian production, but one done in English and aimed for the western market. It should succeed on its merits.
Now on Netflix.