The Brothers Grimm

Directed by: Terry Gilliam

Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci and Lena Headey

Hollywood has been making a lot of REALLY crappy movies based on historical and classic literature figures lately so when I first saw the trailer for The Brothers Grimm I immediately dissed and dismissed the film assuming it was just another in the long line of films that prove that Hollywood is truly out of ideas. Then I found out that the film was directed by none other than Terry Gilliam. You know, that guy who made such classics as Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys and a couple of films with the words “Monty Python” in the title. As soon as I found out that little piece of VERY important info, I was all over this movie as I figured that there was no way that this film could be anything but great…and I was only slightly disappointed.

Ghosts just LOVE shiny things...

The story begins in nineteenth century, French occupied Germany where Will(Damon) and Jake(Ledger) Grimm have made quite a name for themselves as fighters of all things scary. Too bad they’re just a couple of frauds. Now as often happens, the authorities in the area finally catch up with the two brothers and tell our heroes that they won’t be thrown in jail, or worse, for cheating all of the local villagers out of their money if they help the French expose another group of frauds that have been kidnapping children and making the locals think it’s a curse. The problem? There is no other group of frauds and it really is a curse. So basically the Brothers Grimm have to save the children while somehow managing to avoid getting killed by the creatures in the cursed forest AND the French, with nothing more than fake, albeit very shiny armor and serious desire to not end up dead. I don’t want to ruin too many plot details for you but I will say that it was a real kick watching Terry Gilliam weave in elements of EVERY single Grimm fairy tale into one two hour movie to show us where the brothers got all of their inspiration.

Your looking at the single best reason to see this film.

Though, as much as I did get a kick out of certain parts of the film I guess I just expected/hoped for a little more from the man who gave us The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I just kept finding myself wanting to skip ahead till the next time Monica Belluci was on screen...because as everyone knows, Monica Belluci is, well, Monica Belluci...duh. Although I must admit, my desire to skip to Monica's scenes could just be because I'm a perv...who knows. The second greatest thing about this film without a doubt is Peter Stormare's performance as Cavaldi, the perverted French official sent to make sure Jake and WIll don't try to make a run for it. This guy plays THE best perverts...EVER.

Now that I've told you about the best things about the movie, I'll tell you about the worst which simply put is the CGI. One of these days I'm going to write a massive article about how CGI is ruining film making and how directors have gotten VERY lazy when it comes to making films believable because it's just so much easier to have some guy with a Mac come up with something in 3D StudioMax that doesn't even BEGIN to look real than it is to have a real artist create something that IS real...I'm sorry, where am I? Anyway, the point is that the CGI work in this film is totally subpar for a film made in 2005. It might have been alright 5 years ago but with the work that we've seen in the more recent Star Wars films and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, we as viewers now know that studios are capable of delivering MUCH better than what we got in The Brothers Grimm. I don't mean to go on and on about it but it really was so bad that I literally cringed every time I saw any CGI on screen and it ruined the rest of a fairly good film. However, if you don't care about that kind of thing then you will probably enjoy this film. I know that if I could get a cut of the film with the CGI sceens removed I would probably love it.

- Mike

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