The Brothers Grimm (Movie)
Terry Gilliam deserves better.
And, frankly, we deserve better from him.
Not to say that "The Brothers Grimm" is a bad movie, per se, but in light of just about all of Gilliam's other films, like "Brazil" and "Time Bandits," it just seems a little...let's say, hollow. It's a reasonably entertaining movie with middling special effects, decent performances and lots of beautiful visuals. But it just seems to be missing something. Let's call it the Gilliam Heart.
This is a movie about fairy tales, obviously. Some are handled creatively -- the gingerbread man is particularly frightening -- but for the most part it's just seems to be a screenwriter's way of cramming as many different stories into one script as possible. The Mirror Queen, for example, the villainess played by the way-too-hot-to-be-40-it-must-be-an-Italian-thing Monica Belucci is Rapunzel, the evil queen from Snow White, and I think Sleeping Beauty all in one. Frankly, if you want an interesting, mature story with fairy tale character, read Vertigo Comics' Fables. It's anywhere between 100 and 1000 times better story-wise.
The cast does their job. Heath Ledger is actually surprisingly good as the much-more-interesting Jacob Grimm -- his fidgety performance is very much like Brad Pitt's in 12 Monkeys, another Gilliam film. Matt Damon seems kind of confused by everything, playing it straighter as Will Grimm than one might think possible. The standard love interest is, well ... standard. Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare both chew scenery like it was made of gingerbread, but in a good way. Stormare in particular steals all his scenes as a buffoonish Italian torture master.
Visually, Gilliam is as good as ever -- the creepy woods are very cool and creepy, there's a real sense of poverty in the German forest that is the setting of the story, the French baron's castle is a playground of human misery and the contraptions the Grimms use look adequately ridiculous for a couple of flim-flam artists.
Is "The Brothers Grimm" worth seeing? You could probably wait to rent it. The story is rather basic and very linear with no real surprises, the acting is reasonably good, and it's pretty to look at. If you're looking for anything deeper than that, which we would hope for from Terry Gilliam, you should probably hold off. C.
And, frankly, we deserve better from him.
Not to say that "The Brothers Grimm" is a bad movie, per se, but in light of just about all of Gilliam's other films, like "Brazil" and "Time Bandits," it just seems a little...let's say, hollow. It's a reasonably entertaining movie with middling special effects, decent performances and lots of beautiful visuals. But it just seems to be missing something. Let's call it the Gilliam Heart.
This is a movie about fairy tales, obviously. Some are handled creatively -- the gingerbread man is particularly frightening -- but for the most part it's just seems to be a screenwriter's way of cramming as many different stories into one script as possible. The Mirror Queen, for example, the villainess played by the way-too-hot-to-be-40-it-must-be-an-Italian-thing Monica Belucci is Rapunzel, the evil queen from Snow White, and I think Sleeping Beauty all in one. Frankly, if you want an interesting, mature story with fairy tale character, read Vertigo Comics' Fables. It's anywhere between 100 and 1000 times better story-wise.
The cast does their job. Heath Ledger is actually surprisingly good as the much-more-interesting Jacob Grimm -- his fidgety performance is very much like Brad Pitt's in 12 Monkeys, another Gilliam film. Matt Damon seems kind of confused by everything, playing it straighter as Will Grimm than one might think possible. The standard love interest is, well ... standard. Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare both chew scenery like it was made of gingerbread, but in a good way. Stormare in particular steals all his scenes as a buffoonish Italian torture master.
Visually, Gilliam is as good as ever -- the creepy woods are very cool and creepy, there's a real sense of poverty in the German forest that is the setting of the story, the French baron's castle is a playground of human misery and the contraptions the Grimms use look adequately ridiculous for a couple of flim-flam artists.
Is "The Brothers Grimm" worth seeing? You could probably wait to rent it. The story is rather basic and very linear with no real surprises, the acting is reasonably good, and it's pretty to look at. If you're looking for anything deeper than that, which we would hope for from Terry Gilliam, you should probably hold off. C.
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