Terry Gilliam is a weirdly inventive visionary who can best be described as Tim Burton’s forefather. Gilliam best known for quirky fair like “”The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen,”” “”Monty Python & The Holy Grail,”” and “”Time Bandits”” has decided to take on The Brothers Grimm. While watching “”The Brothers Grimm,”” I couldn’t help but think about Gilliam’s great documentary “”Lost In La Mancha”” which chronicled the failure of his last Hollywood project “”The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.””
It’s almost a perfect correlation to “”The Brothers Grimm,”” which is a passionless and soulless feature about the real life exploits of Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) a pair of shysters who bilk townspeople out of money by claiming to fight the supernatural. When we first meet them, a small town hires them to fight a ghost/witch that has been terrorizing the town. Of course the witch is a fake and part of the brother’s traveling “”freak”” show. After being arrested by the army, they are forced to investigate supernatural occurrences in a small village where little girls have been disappearing.The film tries hard, or maybe not hard enough to recreate the moments and scenes from The Brothers Grimm most famous stories. The first girl who goes missing is walking through the forest with her little red cape, then there’s Hansel and Gretel with their bread crumbs, and a moment with the Gingerbread Man that really creeped me out. Unfortunately these moments of brilliance are few and far between and you are left with a film that is stuck with nowhere to go and no story. The Brothers Grimm at the beginning of the film “”Ever After”” had more meat to them than these two.
There is almost zero chemistry between Damon and Ledger, the limited material doesn’t give them anything to work with and never once do you believe that these two are brothers or are doing anything other than “”acting.”” Neither one of them seem to be into this project at all. The set design is pedestrian, other than a sequence at the end that is actually quite beautiful, unfortunately the sequence, while visually gorgeous, makes absolutely no sense. The villages are all dreary, dank, and the cinematography drab.At times, I found it extremely hard not to fall asleep and really wanted to walk out. But the concept of creating real life snippets and moments out of the Grimm’s popular fair tales like “”Little Red Riding Hood,”” “”Hansel and Gretel,”” etc was just too enticing. I sat there waiting and hoping the film would pick up, that Gilliam can somehow salvage the malaise that settles on this, but he never does. You can almost tell that the director himself didn’t much care about this project either. There’s absolutely no passion, from anyone involved and that’s a shame because they had a good premise and framework to work from, but gave up on it.Final Grade DEM Review by Michelle AlexandriaOriginally Posted 08/26/05