The Brothers Grimm

Released in 2005 under the direction of Terry Gilliam with distribution through Miramax Films and Dimension Films; "The Brothers Grimm" is a strange little fantasy movie coming from the surreal and strange mind of Terry Gilliam. To the animation crowd, he is best remembered for the animated segments for Monty Python's sketches, to the science-fiction crowd, Terry is the brilliant mind behind "Time Bandits," "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys," to the strange and artsy dramas of "The Fisher King," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Tideland." Since this is the month of October, I decided to go with the first Gilliam film I saw in theaters and hot damn did it scare the sh*t out of me back then.

Sometime set during the early 1800s, brothers Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm (Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger respectively) are a pair of con "exorcists" that go town-to-town clearing out "ghosts" for money. Found out by Napoleonic General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce), the duo are forced to solve a mystery of disappearing girls in a small village. Entering this village, the two assume the disappearances are part of an elaborate con, despite the insistence of the village huntress Angelika (Lena Headey) insisting it's the work of an evil Queen (Monica Belluchi) trying to regain her youth.
Well that's the basic gist of the story, sadly once the plot finally gets started, the movie trips and stumbles and gets a little bit lost on the way to it's climax. The characters go into the woods, the leave, they come back again, and leave again, go back to prison, then go back to the woods again and then come out again. If the basic plot structure is described like an upward line of rising action to meet the climax, then this movie is the equivalent of the DOW stock, it goes up and down until it finally reaches it's climax.
As for the characters, the nicest thing I can say about them, you remember the little things more than the major things and the little things about them showcase Terry's twisted sense of humor, such as Jonathan Pryce licking a drop of cat's blood of his cheek and Matt Damon licking a toad for directions (I'm not kidding, that happens). Though watching this with the knowledge of Heath Ledger's passing makes you really appreciate his quiet and sensitive performance and the potential Terry saw in this guy. It's a shame these characters don't have a better flowing narrative to work with but I would be more opt to blame the conflicts that occurred during production from the Weinstein Company and Terry Gilliam over who had final cut of the picture.

So what is good about this movie? Well, typical of Terry Gilliam, the dark twisted humor lightens the dark eerie mood now and then (a kitten being thrown into a giant mechanical blender with a spot of blood that lands on Jonathan Pryce's face who casually licks it off all to a bunch of violinists play Luigi Boccherini's "Minuet String Quintet in E Major," if this was anymore Terry Gilliam, that would be Eric Idle in the role or a CGI Graham Chapman would step in and say "Right, stop that, that's silly and a bit suspect I think."), the sets and locations are wonderfully surreal and dream-like, creating that fairy tale atmosphere of fantasy, the costumes are fantastic, strange, sure, but it's Terry Gilliam, would you expect less than normal? The CGI is…pretty laughable compared to today, but not so much that it's too distracting.



But now you're asking me, what was it about this movie that freaked me out when I first saw it?
It's this one scene where a girl, disguised as a boy, goes out to get water from a well and a crow falls in. She pulls up the dead crow until it begins to flap it's wings and throw mud all over her face. The crow flies off, the girl wipes the mud from her face to reveal her eyes, nose and mouth are gone as a mud creature slowly forms with her eyes, nose and mouth as the poor girl blindly wanders terrified as the mud creature follows close behind. That and the girl that gets swallowed by a horse: 
Thanks Terry, glad to know you're always there in the nightmares of a 12 year old.

Is it a perfect movie? Heavens no, it's not even Terry Gilliam's best fantasy film. You want his best, just watch "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" or "Time Bandits" for his best fantasy work. To me, this is passable, in the hands of a less qualified craftsman, I wouldn't give it a second glance, but the magical thing about Gilliam is a second look always makes you notice something you failed to see the last time.

Final Rating: 2/5