|
THE BROTHERS GRIMM Send This Review to a Friend
Director Terry Gilliam knows how to make an elaborate, striking looking movie that reflects skillful handling of logistics, but there isn’t much else in “The Brothers Grimm,” a riff on the fairy tale via a screenplay by Ehren Krueger. After some initial fun, the action becomes boring and makes one wonder at whom the film was aimed. It isn’t funny or exciting enough for adults and too macabre for children.
Will (Matt Damon) and Jake (Heath Ledger), the brothers of the title, roam the French-ruled German countryside in the 19th century as con artists. They rig situations to make it look as if the devil is on hand, and then proceed to use their wiles to get rid of him. They work a happy-go-lucky existence until they run into their nemesis, the French governor, played by Jonathan Pryce. He has an over-the-top sidekick, Cavaldi, portrayed by Peter Stormare.
Damon and Ledger don’t have much charm in their roles, and their interest in Angelika (Lena Headley), a village woman with an independent spirit, doesn’t arouse much appeal either. Monica Bellucci plays the Mirror Queen, a witch seeking eternal beauty, a role is central to some of the film’s wilder imagery.
Various touchstone references to the Grimm tales are woven into the screenplay, thereby making a literary connection. But Gilliam’s film still emerges as a bloated enterprise no matter how many visual effects he has injected or how well he commanded the small army it took to put it on screen. A Dimension Films and MGM release.
|