The Brothers Grimm

Plot synopsis:
Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) are famous for vanquishing witches and demons for a price. They have been earning their living for years by traveling around Germany from village to village defeating supernatural fiends. They usually arrive in a village when they hear that villagers are being attacked. What the villagers don't know is that the pair are con men who stage the attack with their two cohorts. They make a deal with the villagers to drive away the evil spirits for a bag of gold. Unfortunately for them, the French army, which is occupying Germany, discovers what they have been doing to the villagers and arrests them. General Delatombe (Jonathon Pryce) will let them go if the brothers help him find the people kidnapping young girls from one village. The brothers go to the village only to find that they have encountered a cursed forest with real magical spells and real evil spirits. They must battle the enchanted forest to get the girls back. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

Tags: comedy, fantasy, gothic, murder, boring, paranormal, cult, sadist, violence, cute, haunting, flashback, psychedelic, revenge, entertaining, storytelling

Review:
The result is by far the most commercial film to Gilliam's name, but in this case watered-down Gilliam is better than no Gilliam, and his first film in seven years ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in 1998) is a fun one."The Brothers Grimm" certainly looks like a Terry Gilliam movie, loaded with extravagant visuals and wide angled shots, although the $80 million budget did allow for his first use of CGI (it really isn't too bad, though), and it does not have the incredibly surreal feeling to it that most Gilliam films have.
Jonathan Pryce returns to another Gilliam movie as Delatombe, and does a decent job, although his character was a little overly obnoxious at times.
Lena Headey is good as Angelika, and Monica Bellucci also pulls off a good performance, although unfortunately she does not get a significant amount of screen time.The plot of "The Brothers Grimm" wanders a lot, and I actually thought the movie was winding down at around the 90 minute mark, but this works somewhat to the film's advantage, as it makes a fairly straightforward plot seem slightly less predictable.
Like all Terry Gilliam movies, the reaction will be mixed, and there will be some people who absolutely love it, and some who name it their worst film of the year.
As far as I'm concerned, "Grimm" does not hold a candle to Terry Gilliam's previous films, but it is one of the better 'big summer movies', and I certainly felt my time was well spent watching it.3 stars (out of 4).
However, I would caution anyone who doesn't like Terry Gilliam's work, Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, or the REAL brothers Grimms' stories that this is not your average fantasy.
Being a fan of both good old-fashioned fantasy movies and of director Terry Gilliam, I was really looking forward to this one.
I was slightly put off when I heard Gilliam's complaints about the constant interference of the Brothers Weinstein, but the director does have a history of being dissatisfied with the production of projects which actually turn out pretty good in the end, so my hopes were still pretty high.Rather than being a historical biography of the famous authors, this is a fantastic make-believe story of the possible inspirations behind the stories of the Brothers Grimm.
The references to the grimm tales was really the only thing in this movie that seemed like they put thought into it (at first), but then they got sloppy with even that.The cast wasn't bad, but it was just seemed like there was no direction for this film.
It turned out to be similar to Big Fish in a way, but a little darker and with some awesome special effects.Will (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) start off as shysters, bamboozling local town people by setting up elaborate and "supernatural" schemes and charging heavily to ward off monsters, witches or anything else.The story actually starts getting interesting when they run into an actual supernatural occurrence (or fairy tale).
The Big Bad Wolf, for example, has been reduced to a standard-issue wolf-man (brought to life with digital effects that are just a tad too jerky to be excused in our age of high-tech movie-making).In this version, the brothers (Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, both inexplicably adopting English accents) are con artists who go from town to town posing as conjurers who can protect the local populace from evil spirits.
Will (Matt Damon) and Jacob (Heath Ledger) are guided by the local Angelika (Lena Headey) through an enchanted forest where they face the evil Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci) that depends on the sacrifice of twelve girls in the eclipse to stay beautiful and young."The Brothers Grimm" is an underrated dark fable, homage to the authors of a great number of fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm.
It's funny, interesting, exciting, and even a little scary (so don't bring your little children if they get scared easily).The premise - Matt Damon and Heath Ledger are the Brothers Grimm, famous around French-occupied Germany for driving away demons, though they are, in fact, con artists with fancy gadgets and conspirators for special effects.
The costumes are likewise gorgeous and apt.If you think about this film enough to ask questions like, "if evil magic was real, how come the brothers are famous instead of having been discredited the first time they pretended to fight off a real evil presence and it continued to haunt people?" then you will be disappointed.
This is a fantastic flick revolving around the legendary German brothers Will (Matt Damon , Johnny Depp was originally set to star this character) including references to fairy tales (most recorded by the Grimms).
At a village to protect townsfolk are guided by the stranger villager named Angelika (Lena Headey , Nikole Kidman cast originally) they find a genuine fairy-tale curse in an enchanted forest with real magical beings .This is an imaginative , glamorous , chaotic fantasy based on the haunted journeys carried out by Brothers Grimm , though a little bit paced in fits and starts .
A lot of references to fairy tales are slightly different from the actual stories : Little Red Riding Hood is referenced only by her red cape, the heroic woodsman from "Little Red Riding Hood" is an evil henchman, the Big Bad Wolf is a large wolf instead of a diabolical personification, Rapunzel is an evil queen who locks herself in a tower to escape a plague, the Gingerbread Man is an incarnation of a mud monster, Jack from Jack and The Beanstalk becomes Jake, "Hans" and "Greta" are the original forms of the diminutives "Hänsel and Gretel" , Cinderella is really the Grimm Brothers as they scrub the floors , the evil queen is also the queen from Snow White, all the girls' fingers are pricked as they fall into a deep sleep just like Sleeping Beauty, the Woodsman places slippers on Sasha's feet as he prepares her for the crypt, and Jake tells everyone a story of an imp whose name they had to guess, a clear reference to Rumpelstiltskin .
Not quite the story of the Brothers Grimm I know, but Terry Giliam and his awesome crew did an amazing job of telling a fairy tale.
Terry Gilliam-directed fantasy has incredible production values, cinematography and scoring (not to mention two appealing lead performances by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger), yet it takes a good hour to get this picture off the ground.
All I know is, he either is not here, or he just really should not have taken so much of a break from making movies, problems with productions or not.Matt Damon and Heath Ledger have seen better days (read: Syriana and Brokeback Mountain), but they make the most of their performances.
It was a bad mix of the following: A pleiad of stars (Matt Damon, Monica Belucci, etc), really bad scenario (or, more precisely, no scenario at all - it looked like the crew was trying to improvise, not to follow any written script), sometimes good music (and sometimes something really illogical - Bulgarian Folklore chanting is heard in the middle of the movie, and Serbian music - at the end - and remember, the action is taking place in a small German village!); and some small extracts from various fairy tales are inserted here and there, in a distorted, degenerative way...You want to take your children to see this "fairytale"?
Regardless of my admiration of Mr. Gilliam's previous creations, finishing watching this movie prompted me to exclaim out loud just that: "STUPID"!Stupid me for wasting my time and money, Stupid, for not realizing the state of today's cinema which treats audience as if it were a bunch of debilitated children!I don't know whether Terry Gilliam went senile or lost all his creativity and directing skills (some argue he never possessed them).What was he thinking?
Acting was moronic, FX very average, directing same as acting and the story mediocre!I feel bad for those who invested money into this flick (I wouldn't even call it a movie) and not a bit surprised Terry couldn't and still can't find finding for his other projects.Mr. Gilliam obtained sufficient status to have a responsibility not to offer crap like "Brothers Grimm" for viewing.
It seemed like someone walked on the set one day after most of the movie had been filmed and said "You forgot to put these fairy tales in, I don't care how you do it or whether or not it makes sense, but put them in." Awful.
I saw this movie on Saturday (rented it, I never saw it at the theater), the beginning was real confusing, I thought the story was about a freaky twist on classic fairy tales as the Grimm Bros.
But far away young girls are suddenly going missing by some unseen force, so the Grimms are sent there, but that's where the real fairy tales begin to uncurl.Even though that was a pleasant preface, don't take it for granted, some parts of the film are super weird, there this one scene where a little girl has slime all over her, she tries wiping it off her face, but ends up wiping away her facial features, really weird scene.
This is not a static clichéd film, but an imaginative and glorious example of how to creatively weave a story.This movie pays homage to many of the classic fairy tales, but does so in a fresh and interesting way.
Many scenes allude to their older origins but the pattern is natural and doesn't feel forced at all.The actors all fit their parts superbly as well, and clothing is authentic and most fitting.As i said before, i have no complaints about this movie, other then I wish i had watched it sooner, and on the big screen, and that i hope there will be a sequel, or at least more films with the same richness in story that this one possesses..
Then I thought about it and I realized the cartoon-like feel was a way to accent the larger than life fairy tales that came down through history from the Brothers Grimm.
That the man continues to try and tell enchanting tales in the cold hard reality of the Hollywood machine commands nothing less than awe from meDon Quixote could not have appointed a better spiritual successor.I'm not going to discuss the film as I don't think we've seen it yetjust a faded shadow of what Terry Gilliam intended..
This tale of Will and Jake Grimm (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger), two brothers who go from town to town, staging elaborate supernatural stunts to extort money from hapless citizens has promising talent in front of and behind the camera (Terry Gilliam directs), but is ultimately a film as catastrophic as it is charmless.The green-screened special effects are very poor in certain scenes (as if background detail wasn't filled in), the plot (what can be deciphered, that is) is schizophrenic and generally disposable, and the dialog (delivered with mediocre-to-poor accents) is largely incomprehensible.
Director Terry Gilliam returns to familiar territory with what fans of his come to expect- a madman style of film-making and compositions (with camera movements that are sometimes mind-boggling), a delightfully over-the-top sense of humor with visual gags and performances unhinged, and something that is lacking in most other studio product- exuberance.
Gilliam, casting against 'type' as he's said in interviews, has made Damon more of the headstrong and grounded one, while Ledger is more creative, and soon believing the dark fairy tales that come to life in the film.
But the actors have enough ability to match up to the special effects (the computer effects, by the way, are not half-bad, a surprise considering Gilliam's professed dislike of CGI), and the script, although sometimes over-the-map, is coherent in the scrambled, fairy tale sense.Another thing I expected was the critical response; pretty much all of Gilliam's films (maybe excluding the Python ones) have been met with mixed reviews, who's main complaints are that he loses the sight of the narrative and the story while indulging with his visual ambitions and wild characterizations.
The French characters are so overdone in their stupidity (yes Mr. Gilliam, we know you hate the French) that you cannot understand a word they say and nothing they do makes sense or is even a little bit funny.This is Hollywood at its worst - a great preview and nothing else of substance or style..
This is a heavy-handed, dull movie and it's hard to say what's the target audience for such waste of time.The premise was good: a dark, twisted adventure about the legendary German brothers Jake (Heath Ledger) and Will Grimm (Matt Damon) traveling from village to village, pretending to protect townsfolk from witches and devilish creatures, and faking exorcisms.
But the screenplay (written by Ehren Kruger, from the good "Arlington Road" and teen flicks "Scream 3", "The Ring") is awful, Terry Gilliam wasn't in his best days, the actors overact and the whole thing ended up this imbroglio.This is probably Gilliam's worst movie (haven't seen "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", though  therefore I cannot judge).
I feel that Gilliam has done a good job on this movie.I found very pleasant, the way that he played with the other fairy stories, making lots of references to snow white, Cinderella, or Rapunzel...
Thank goodness.The Brothers Grimm feels like it was made for those of us who grew up with Grimm fairy tales, so you need to pay close attention for the clever nods to characters from the original stories (particularly Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, and The Gingerbread Man).
If you're willing to embrace a small amount of your PG-13 dark side, and you love letting yourself get wrapped up in fantasy and fairy tale worlds, then you very likely well find a lot to enjoy in The Brothers Grimm..
the film was really mysterious n extraordinary and also with the strange french king who sent Jacob Grimm (heath ledger)and Wilhelm Grimm(Matt Damon)to the forest to end the peculiar events was a great character to watch as well...but what i mainly loved was the fact that it was a mixture of different fairy tales put in to one film but it didn't make the film seem to over the top..and you couldn't move until you had finished watching the film!!
If this was all you had heard of them you would surely not read their tales to you children.Consider this movie with another title and different character names - it becomes a much better story that does not leave you wondering 'but what about the Grimm's and their stories?".As director Gilliam says in his commentary, He was not interested in the script but, hey, it was work....
As a whole, this was not a very entertaining movie for me.The film certainly has an interesting concept: The Brothers Grimm (Matt Damon & Heath Ledger) are con-artists who go from town to town exorcising witches and demons and such from the local townsfolk.
No, it's not like all the other action movies out there...of course not, it's a Terry Gilliam film!
Aside from my personal lack of interest in fantasy, the medieval times, wounded horses that look like it couldn't have been done in a fake manor, three things this film has, the story has enough token female characters to last the next twenty years in the James Bond franchise, a normal and formulaic path for which a potentially imaginative script to follow, and not enough Terry Gilliam flare..
It seems like Terry Gilliam had too many ideas for this movie, and instead of editing his ideas down and using only the best ones, he used them all and a result this movie is wildly disjointed, lacks any sort of pacing, and is just plain unpleasant to watch.The plot features Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as Will and Jake Grimm.
The film had a lot of big names like Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Jonathan Pryce (a Gilliam favorite from Brazil), Monica Bellucci, and Lena Headey.
They aren't good effects at all; ten years later you can see how poorly they were processed.One thing Ledger said in a supplemental feature sticks with me: "None of us would be here if it wasn't for Terry." The only reason "Brothers Grimm" got made was to give Gilliam something to do; this time it wasn't reason enough..
Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm" is almost exclusively a special effects movie, with popular young leading men Matt Damon (as Wilhelm "Will" Grimm) and Heath Ledger (as Jacob "Jake" Grimm) playing the everlasting authors as a couple of early nineteenth century "Ghostbusters".
The Brothers Grimm is a good dark fairy tale movie.
The Brothers Grimm is a good dark fairy tale movie.
Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger are solid as the Grimm brothers traveling con artists who encounter a genuine fairy tale curse.
Director Terry Gilliam is admirable in making this movie that does have a slow pace at times but the good outweighs the bad in this one.
Overall The Brothers Grimm is a decent fairy tale with some action, humor, suspense, impressive special effects, and good performances by the cast(especially Damon and Ledger) who make this film worth watching at least once..
Wow what a wonderful story that really is, think of the millions and millions of children WHO READ because of the beginnings of those brothers, and we are reduced to Matt Damon & Heath Ledger, doing a Terry Gilliam knock off of Legend of Sleepy Hollow (movie) plus a few gimmicks.Is that the only way movies can be made now?
Gilliam is not interested in showing off the fairy tales although some of them do show up in the movie, the point is really just a fragmented and non-sensical film.
full stop.' 'The Brothers Grimm' is a brilliant film, with amazing special effects and attention to detail, setting fairy-tale fantasy next to bloody realism, and (in the opinion of this viewer) none too long at 118 minutes.