The Brothers Grimm

September 18, 2005 | 2 Comments

I don’t see too many movies so when I do I like to make it count. I was really wary of seeing The Brother’s Grimm as I’d heard it might not be all that good. Still, I’m a big fan of Terry Gilliam, and while I expected it to be less like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and more like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen I figured it’d be worth a shot.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

The Brothers Grimm isn’t great, but it’s pretty good and has much more “Gilliam-ishness” than I’d expected. It’s quite funny at times and downright twisted at others. All of which I greatly enjoyed.

I was impressed with the performances as well. We’re not talking Oscars here, but for this kind of a movie they were pretty good. I felt Matt Damon was decent and Heath Ledger was actually pretty good. However, as leads they were both pretty much upstaged by Jonathan Pryce, who plays a character here is much like his character in Munchausen—very entertaining—and the great performance of Peter Stormare.

The effects were good and there was all sorts of great art and cinematography. The story was much better than I’d expected as well, with a decent plot through which to weave all of the craziness.

If you like Gilliam’s films, especially Munchausen and Time Bandits you should give The Brothers Grimm a shot. I don’t feel it’s quite as good as those, but it’s not half bad either.

My rating: 3.5 out of 5

Filed under: Movies
Keyword Tags: the+brothers+grimm Terry+Gilliam

Comments

1. Nicolas Demers said:

I liked the movie too. Damon was tolerable and, so help me, I giggled like crazy at Pryce’s over-the-top French mannerisms. And the typical Gilliam-esque twisted & shocking bits served (for me) to reinforce the message that this is not Disney, and those old stories were not nice and fluffy.

Mind you, it wasn’t Gilliam’s best work by a long shot. In particular, he did the “story about stories” bit a lot better in Baron Munchhausen. And I was disappointed by the arbitrary use of fairy-tale logic to wrap up the loose plot points.

But all in all, I was entertained, and it gave me a hankering to reread my book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Plus, even half a Gilliam movie is better than 99% of the dreck Hollywood pumps out.

Posted on September 19, 2005 03:34 PM | #

2. Jennifer Grucza said:

I liked it a lot. My brother and his girlfriend (both very much into film) were critical, but I thought it was very exciting and fun to watch. From the commercials, it seemed to me to be in a Princess Bride sort of vein, but it was definitely darker than that. I didn’t realize until after I saw it that it was done by the same person as Baron Munchausen. It’s definitely not as weird as Baron Munchausen (well, as weird as I remember it being, anyway - it’s been a long time since I saw it). Anyway, I’d give it a 4.5/5, personally, and even though I hardly ever buy DVDs, I think I’d get this one.

Posted on September 20, 2005 11:43 AM | #