As a Terry Gilliam fan even his most critcised films turn out to be entertaining pieces, and often defy the criticism by growing better with age, showing imagination and originality in their presentation. Whether The Brothers Grimm has suffered similar obstacles as that off the ill fated Don Quixote, I’m not certain, but there’s very little Gilliam about this adventure, and it pains me to say that it’s rather pedestrian and about as imaginative as athele’s foot.
The Brothers Grimm is a tale of two brothers who fake ghostly happenings in order to make a living. Visiting town after town they continue their charade until they are discovered by French soldiers in French occupied Germany. Offered a change at life, they are sentenced to visiting a village on the outskirts where children have gone missing, eleven in all, and tasked in the recovery of the children and to find out the suspected tricks being played by more charlatans. Relunctantly the brothers agree, seeing as their life is in the balance, only to find their strange stories have turned into a reality of nightmares they could only previously imagine.
There are shouts to several Grimm tales including Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man, amongst others, that are cleverly and brilliantly interwoven during the spectacle that takes place during the adventures of Will and Jake Grimm. These are, however, the highlights of what is a very unimaginative adventure otherwise.
Heath Ledger and Matt Damon do decent jobs of behaving like con-artists one moment, and turning into fly-by-night heroes to the calling the next, Lena Headey is also likeable as the female protaganist that doesn’t cry wolf (no pun intended) when in trouble. So there’s nothing wrong with the cast either.
What fails for me is the script, and the slow pace at which the film runs. I’m used to Gilliam taking the viewer from break neck speed to a snails crawl to get a point across, or to create atmosphere and intrigue. Here the slow pace stifles the film, offering nothing of those mentioned, and more over boring the viewer into submission.
Some of the action sequences are fun to an extent, and it’s admirable that the brothers only have “authentic” tools with which to fight the hellish nightmare that will unfold, but it’s a mild-mannered slap on the wrist rather than the wild and lucid Time Bandits or the thought provoking Twelve Monkeys.
The tales themselves as they unfold aren’t very grim, PG grim is more apt. That means you’re never scared, or quaking, and rather than being offended or fascinated with morbid curiosity of the expected dark tales, you’re actually puzzled as to the overwhelming attempt at horror and fear that offers neither, and leaves you in limbo not quite sure what to make of the film.
In the end I was pretty disappointed, most likely because of my own high expectations of Gilliam’s latest offering. Perhaps with script and directorial control he may have turned this into rivetting entertainment. Instead you’re left feeling cold, bewlidered and generally bored. It’s not a an awful film, and there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours than watching this average fantasy film, but it’s not wholly entertaining, and one of the worst Gilliam films I’ve seen to date.
Verdict: Less than grim, and more fairy than horror. An average Gilliam film.