The Brothers Grimm (2005)

I have to begin this review by letting you know right off that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I haven't adored everything Terry Gilliam has done, but I don't hate his style, either. Rather, I judge each movie by its own merits.

This work is adventurous, exciting, and story-driven. Most would probably consider this work action-driven, but I find there IS a good solid story behind the action. It has moments of suspense, breath-taking imagery, and stylized humor. It is a great movie.

A great movie, which has obvious flaws.

Regardless of how much I enjoyed this movie, there was one element which nagged at me the whole time I was viewing this work. Mind you, I have not seen this on DVD, so I am unaware if they have created the DVD "fix" for this yet, or not. I could not help but notice, in several places, the editing seemed stiff.

I am fervently hoping that this came from a paring down of those scenes. If such is the case, then I am also (just as fervently) hoping they give us (the US & Canada) a Region 1, 2-disk Director's Cut with those scenes edited BACK IN! I hate it when they include the deleted scenes outside the movie. Put those back where they belong!

On the flip side...

With the release of Underworld in 2003, the sub-sub-genre of Action/Horror has taken a turn at the box office. Just as, "The Worst Witch," revived the interest in Magick and fantasy, and generated an audience for the later, "Harry Potter," series, so did, "Underworld," revive the Horror genre and the appreciation for the blending of Horror and Action.

This work, "The Brothers Grimm," as an Action/Horror, does not foot the bill. There is too little Horror and the action is sometimes a bit subdued. There are places where CGI and/or choreography is obvious thereby breaking the Spell so competently woven by the story and virtue of the characters. However, it IS too dark for the kiddies, and still quite enjoyable.

I was not disappointed, but I was not elated over the final product, either. Here's hoping for a GOOD "fix" (and a timely release) of the 2-disk Region 1 Director's Cut DVD release.

It rates an 8.6/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Fmovies: When i starting watching this movie, I was immediately in awe of the authenticity and realism of the sets and props. The scenery and backgrounds just ooze detail and really help set the tone for the story and entice the viewer into it's world.

Everything about this movie felt natural, and perfect. Although there were a few obvious CGI effects (after all, the movie was made in 2001) they are used sparingly and appropriately and fit the feel of the scene. I'm the first one to complain usually when watching films when something doesn't feel right, or if the plot isn't realistic enough or moves to fast. For this movie, I have no complaints, in that or any other regard.

The movie is long, but the pacing and development is perfect. The ending isn't really that much of a surprise, no sudden twists, but how the story gets to that point, is really the rewarding part. This is not a static clichéd film, but an imaginative and glorious example of how to creatively weave a story.

This movie pays homage to many of the classic fairy tales, but does so in a fresh and interesting way. Many scenes allude to their older origins but the pattern is natural and doesn't feel forced at all.

The actors all fit their parts superbly as well, and clothing is authentic and most fitting.

As i said before, i have no complaints about this movie, other then I wish i had watched it sooner, and on the big screen, and that i hope there will be a sequel, or at least more films with the same richness in story that this one possesses.

People have a curious tendency not to notice how bizarre and gruesome children's fairy tales often are. Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm" does notice. Unfortunately, that's just about its only insight into the subject. The film shows no understanding of what makes fairy tales memorable and exciting, or why they have endured through the ages.

A much better handling of the subject is the 1962 film "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," which intersperses a realistic though nonfactual account of the brothers' lives with dramatic recreations of the tales they collected. I'm not saying that Gilliam had to do a retread of the same material. I would be very happy to see a remake with a radically new approach, as long as it respects the underlying subject matter. Gilliam's film does not. Its storyline is mostly a long string of fantasy and horror clichés that remind us far more of contemporary movies than of classic fairy tales. The Big Bad Wolf, for example, has been reduced to a standard-issue wolf-man (brought to life with digital effects that are just a tad too jerky to be excused in our age of high-tech movie-making).

In this version, the brothers (Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, both inexplicably adopting English accents) are con artists who go from town to town posing as conjurers who can protect the local populace from evil spirits. A French general (Jonathan Pryce) catches on to what they're doing and forces them to work for him, on pain of death. But when they're sent to a new town, their old tricks prove useless against an age-old curse that really does haunt the woods.

The movie belongs to the old genre where famous writers become characters in their own stories. It's a genre I've never much liked, maybe because it suggests a failure to comprehend the powers of human imagination. ("No one could have made up these stories; they must have really happened!") But I have enjoyed a few films of this kind, such as the 1979 movie "Time After Time," where H.G. Wells builds a time machine and travels to the 1970s in pursuit of Jack the Ripper. This type of story has to work hard to achieve the willing suspension of disbelief. "The Brothers Grimm" fails on that front because it changes its reality too often. In an early scene, we're shown an intense battle with an awesome-looking banshee. Then the whole battle is revealed to have been staged. And then, later on, we're asked to believe that magic really does exist in this world after all. These repeated shifts in the story's reality are profoundly disorienting.

The source of disarray in the woods is an undead queen (Monica Bellucci) trying to regain her youth in an elaborate spell that will be completed once she sacrifices a series of children from the town. She resides in a tower in the woods, appearing as a skeleton on one side of a mirror and as a beautiful woman on the other. Her magical control over the woods serves as an excuse for numerous scenes of mysterious enchantment, most of which have a very tenuous connection to the central plot. The trees in the forest seem to have a life of their own, walking around when no one's looking. A mysterious creature lurks at the bottom of a well. The wolf-man is a servant of the mirror queen, using magic to ward off would-be visitors. But a coherent story never emerges from these elements. The screenplay seems to make up the rules as it goes along, inventing whatever is convenient at any given moment.

The Brothers Grimm fmovies. The beginning of this movie sucked me in and I really wanted to see how it all came together. As the movie went on though, I found it getting progressively worse. Everything that was a special effect in the movie was CGI and poorly done CGI at that. I could understand the wolf standing on two legs, but trees are CGI and spider webs are CGI. It just got so ridiculous I started to lose interest. Everyone's character is over the top without any point to it. The references to the grimm tales was really the only thing in this movie that seemed like they put thought into it (at first), but then they got sloppy with even that.

The cast wasn't bad, but it was just seemed like there was no direction for this film. They wanted it to be a grimm tale, but with a modern way of telling it. The first five minutes like I said sucked me in and I was waiting for them to build off of that moment in Jacob's life. Then it becomes a whole other movie. I was happy I didn't spend any money to see this, I found myself thinking (after every CGI moment) "What was I thinking?" I still have no answer for that question.

In my opinion this movie isn't worth any kind of fee. If you want to see it borrow it from a friend or find another (legal) way to view it without paying. When or if you see this movie don't let the first five minutes trick you, the movie will only get worse from there.

The Brothers Grimm is a different movie than what I expected. It turned out to be similar to Big Fish in a way, but a little darker and with some awesome special effects.

Will (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) start off as shysters, bamboozling local town people by setting up elaborate and "supernatural" schemes and charging heavily to ward off monsters, witches or anything else.

The story actually starts getting interesting when they run into an actual supernatural occurrence (or fairy tale). It seems that children have been vanishing in some "enchanted woods" and the French believe it is a scam similar to ones the Grimms have pulled.

While fighting off beasts and such, The Brothers Grimm encounter people who obviously inspire stories such as Little Red Riding Hood, Jack & The Beanstalk, Snow White and others. Altogether, things fill out quite nicely. It never comes straight out and says that Grimm's Fairy Tales comes from these stories but it gives the audience enough credit to figure that out on it's own, even though it is quite obvious.

Lena Headey deserves to be mentioned as the lovely Angelika. She plays a hardened and tough hunter/trapper who helps The Grimms and is also the love interest, which I guess is expected. Also, Monica Bellucci was a good addition as the "mirror queen".

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Like I said, more than I thought I would have. The special effects were very nice. The trees move realistically like snakes. More believable than some of the giant snake movies I have seen, anyways. I can recommend this movie. If you like Tim Burton style of movies, then you should like this one as well. 8/10

Like his Baron Munchhausen, Gilliam's Brothers Grimm has been horridly misunderstood by critics and public alike. What I get from the comments and reviews is the sense of thwarted expectations, although I have little idea what the anti-Grimms expected in the first place. People dislike the kitten scene because it's a cute kitten. This I find entirely in the grotesque spirit of the original folk tales. We've learned to take our fairy tales Disneyfied, apparently. I've also heard complaints about the quality of the special effects as sub-ILM quality. Frankly, that's what I liked about them. They *didn't* look like ILM; they looked personal. I admit I found the basic premise a cliché (two con men who make their living on the superstitious gullible find out that, in this case, the magic is real), but its working-out overcomes this basic flaw. This is a movie that shuns cliché. The brightest scenes, for example, almost always contain the greatest menace. Relative safety is drab, dirty, brutish, nasty, and short. Ledger gives an amazing performance -- I had previously regarded him as a Troy Donahue update. Matt Damon shows he has the chops to cross over from small "indies" to big performances in the old leading-man vein. Peter Stromare and Jonathan Pryce do a highbrow Martin & Lewis -- Stromare all over the place and Pryce coolly self-contained -- to hilarious effect. The faces alone in this movie are wonderful, hearkening back to the glory days of Leone. There are so many telling details in the background ("Bienvenue a Karlstadt") -- let alone the foreground -- that show Gilliam's mastery. Harry Potter (which I enjoyed), Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia are for the kiddies and show us worlds we can, with effort, control. Gilliam doesn't offer any such comfort, not even at the end. The sense of menace is overwhelming, and Gilliam achieves it without super-special effects, usually camera movement (the shots following Little Red Riding Hood through the forest made my jaw drop). A brilliant film, operating at a high level we don't see much of these days. Someone compared the movie to Burton's Big Fish, another film dismissed or ignored by critics and public. Although Burton's and Gilliam's sensibilities differ, I take the writer's point. The confident, poetic handling of myth and archetype in both astonishes.