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The Brothers Grimm
First off, let me spill the magic beans: this isn't vintage Gilliam. This isn't the distinctive one-of-a-kind dark fantasy that you can recognize instantly as coming from that cinematic visionary. It's a little more toned down, a bit more accessible perhaps, not as sharply cynical or disarmingly surreal or as smart. But it's still a Heck of a lot of fun.
The movie The Brothers Grimm follows Wilhelm "Will" Grimm (Matt Damon) and Jacob "Jake" Grimm (Heath Ledger), who are not only collectors of regional folk tales, myths and superstitions, but also traveling con artists. Will is the realist and huckster, and Jake goes along with the schemes but deep down still believes in magic and the unexplainable. Their act however is quite explainable: they go from town to town throughout the land, listening to the locals rant about a cursed river or ghostly apparition, then with a team of two assistants mock up the phenomenon and promptly vanquish it with a box of supposed amulets and potions. And of course these services are always rendered for a price. Since Will knows these sightings and hauntings are hysteria and self-made delusions, the panacea of a showy battle with the spirits is all the cure these folks need.
Jake is fed-up with the scheming, but before he can take a stand against his brother they are brought before a French General who controls the region. General Delatombe (Gilliam veteran Jonathan Pryce) is aware of their petty charades, and in exchange for not executing them he enlists team Grimm to travel to a remote village on the edge of a thick woods where ten little girls have gone missing, supposedly abducted by some sort of force hidden in the thickets. The panic and fear of the townspeople is making that corner of the region unstable, so Delatombe commands them to go and find what other hucksters are working the fairy tale scam over there and return the girls. The General sends his most ruthless henchman, an Italian torturer named Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), to keep an eye on them and make sure they do the job quickly. As you'd expect, these woods are actually haunted, and for the first time in their careers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm come up against the kind of dark magic they've been faking to line their pockets.
It's a decent premise, and along the way we see the roots of many a famous Grimm fairly tale. This should be prime material for Gilliam, who covered similar kind of ground in Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But it never reaches those lofty heights. Not consistently anyway. There are some wonderful moments, some deliciously dark and subversive, but outside of those scattered bits (the kitty cat is the flat-out best, a laugh as twisted and macabre as anything in Terry's filmography) and some very good visuals and sets here and there, it never kicks into the highest gear he's capable of. Damon and Ledger are fine, I actually like some of the mannerisms Heath adopted, but neither is great. For greatness look no further than Pryce and Stormare, who are hysterical and mesmerizing every instant they're on the screen. The other main character is Angelika, a quick-witted young woman with knowledge of the woods and skill with a bow, who's father and two sisters have already fallen to the cursed goings on. She's played by Lena Headey, an English actress who is easy on the eyes (kind of an older and taller Keira Knightley) and credible enough, but again falls short of any spectacular performance or charisma. Gilliam had wanted Samantha Morton (Minority Report, In America) for the role, and she's such a good actress with such a unique presence, I'd loved to have seen her as Angelika. And if say Pryce and Stormare had been cast as the Brothers Grimm instead of supporting parts…who knows what kind of shape the film might have taken?
The shape as it is, with the more lightweight and innocuous Damon, Ledger and Headey, is not bad. Not bad at all. It’s just not great, not the kind of great Gilliam has done in the past and will again in the future. The uber-stunning Monica Bellucci rounds out the cast in a crucial part that doesn't get a mountain of screentime, and she is just right as the vain Queen behind all the spells and enchantments.
The effects, like many aspects of the film, again are not bad, but simply are not the unique stamp that announces A TERRY GILLIAM FILM. For the first time in his career Terry uses CGI. Anybody who's seen Lost in LaMancha will remember the great lengths and expense he was going through to avoid reliance on the computer for effects, to keep his otherworldly creations tangible things rather than sophisticated cartoons. To me it's obvious he compromised here, to keep the budget down and get the flippin' thing in the can. After a now six-year span between movies with the heartbreaking disaster of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote still a bad taste in his mouth, I think it's perfectly understandable why he went that way. Now that The Brothers Grimm is under his belt and in the meantime between it being finished and languishing in non-release as he butted heads with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Terry has already shot and completed another film: the smaller, cheaper, darker and infinitely more bizarre Tideland. Grimm is not the disaster I feared it would be, knowing one of my favorite directors had to make some compromises. It's not a triumph either, but I was happily surprised at how delightful it still is. And I am quite literally salivating for Tideland.
I'd grade The Brothers Grimm a healthy B-, and it's also one I suspect I'll like more with repeat viewings down the line. While it is the least of his films thus far, do not cheat yourself out of the enjoyment of seeing it on the big screen just because the preponderance of mainstream reviews have been awful. Masterpiece? No. Worth seeing? Indeed. And if you don't howl with laughter at what happens to that kitty cat there's something wrong with you. Or maybe those of us who will fall out of out seats howling with laughter have something very wrong with us? But that's the kind of devilish wrong that you get from Gilliam at his best.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 06-05-14 at 12:15 PM.
