The Brothers Grimm (2005)

• 
  
  April 29, 2012

  moonrivers

  Terry Gilliam gives us this unique congregation of the well known Grimm fairy tales, built around a traveling pair of con artists bilking superstitious country folk who are put to the test when they stumble onto the real thing: an evil witch ( which is sorta like The Blair Witch ... read moreProject come to think of it - w/o the video cameras). Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, and the always wonderful Peter Stomare head up the spooky proceedings with aplomb.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  November 1, 2011

  fb729949618

  One of the few (if not the only) movie(s) I have walked out of in theaters. The film wants to go many places, but fails to go to any of them. Extremely boring, don't bother.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  May 19, 2011

  3niR

  This movie was entertaining yet it lacked something. It does have a lot of potential in it. It was like a mixture of different fairy tales. But somewhat, it just couldn't reach the awesomeness.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  February 22, 2011

  sanjurosamurai

  it seems like the people who dont know or dont understand grimms fairy tales were the ones who didnt get this film. i loved it, and although i have often wondered what the film might have been like had ledger and damon switched roles, this is a very fun movie and very underrated.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  February 20, 2011

  harrycaul

  I've been putting off watching this for ages thinking I would hate it and, what do you know, I rather enjoyed it in the end. I can't help feeling sorry for Terry Gilliam though. Is it any wonder his movies are so scrappy given the production difficulties that invariably dog his w... read moreork? On this one, having already fought unsuccessfully with the Writers Guild of America (again) to credit his co-authorship of the script, and having also struggled to find a distributor, Gilliam was forced to shoot his movie with a toxic atmosphere on set and an officious Weinstein brother in each ear vetoing his decisions. So, yes, it's messy, and the flimsy plot - which casts the eponymous brothers as mitteleuropean ghostbusting charlatans - never develops into anything more than an excuse to reference as many fairy tales as possible (with nods to Millais' Ophelia and Elizabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess), but visually it's absolutely gorgeous, truly one of the best-looking fantasy films you'll ever see. Perhaps the biggest flaw, for me, is that the movie, ironically, seems to work better whenever the Brothers Grimm themselves are off screen. Ordinarily I've got a lot of time for Ledger and Damon but their performances here are a little too frantic for my taste; Peter Stormare and Jonathan Pryce are even further off the scale. Much better are Lena Headey, as the gutsy heroine, and Monica Bellucci, practising her wicked queen chops.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  December 26, 2010

  ythelastman89

  By far the closest thing that Terry Gilliam has gotten to doing something like The Holy Grail. This is just really fun and genuinely hilarious. The running gags about magic beans and character nationalities were what gave it the feeling of silliness that some of Terry Gilliam's m... read moreovies can lack at times. It doesn't hurt that Matt Damon and Heath Ledger are priceless together and work so well as brothers. There was no need to ever establish the relationship because it was so obvious in the performances. The story is so tied into the writings of the Brother's Grimm, but that doesn't make it feel stale in the least. You never feel as if you're watching a rehash of movies/stories that you've experienced before because the whole movie focuses so much on inspiration. It's so much fun to pick out which characters and subplots would become the full fledged stories we all know and love. Anyone who's a fan of just really fun fantasy/adventure movies cannot resist this particular venture.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  December 18, 2010

  CloudStrife84

  Quite all right, if also very flawed and uneven. Obvious studio sets and equally apparent CGI. Director Terry Gilliam, who is perhaps best known for his Monty Python movies, seems to have taken a downfall in quality in latter years. Granted that he's never made a movie that truly... read more "wowed" me, but considering his capabilities, this is no doubt below par for him. What's fun about this film though, is that it incorporates so many of the real Grimm bros' fairytales. Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and many other classics are interweaved into the plot. It's just a shame it all ends up being so lackluster. The prologue is a joke of an introduction and despite good efforts from Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, the story never ascends. In summary: worth a look, but nothing you'd regret missing.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  July 28, 2010

  superjoker1

  It starts out, at the very beginning, looking like one of the best movies ever, then becomes unwatchable bad in the center. However, "The Brothers Grim" gets better at the end. Damon and Ledger are great, and you really can hardly beat a story about two bumbling people of no nota... read moreble skill or importance have to face off against walking nightmares.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  May 21, 2010

  cosmo313

  I really wanted to like this movie, and not just because I wanted to be different from my friends who didn't like it. I just can't though, and it's a damn shame. This should have been a really good movie, especially given the director, actors involved, and the concept. Conceptual... read morely, yeah, it is good, but specifics with plot, story, and the script itself is where there;s trouble, Ehren Kruger just isn't a good writer.That's the first problem. Aside from that, the film is also overlong, poorly paced (too slow) and, worst of all, it's boring and hard to care for the characters or what happens. I can enjoy a movie that favors style over substance, but only for so long. This is especially true when I still care what happens, even if substance is lacking. The best part of this movie is everything involving visuals: the art direction, set design, set pieces, and general visual look and style. Unfortunately, I feel as if all of this is overbearing here, becoming too much of a good thing. In the acting department, Damon and Ledger give it their all inspite of what they have to work with. Headey does more than look nice, which helps, and Stormare gives a typically off the wall performance, but all of the hard work the actors put forth is in vain-they can't save the picture.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  March 15, 2010

  mumby1988

  One of the hardest things about being a film fan is when a director you love makes a really bad film. We expect nothing but the worst from Michael Bay, Brett Ratner and McG, so that while their films are terrible this does not come as a shock. But when Alan Parker makes The Life ... read moreof David Gale, or Tim Burton makes Mars Attacks!, or Ridley Scott makes A Good Year, it is almost unbearable. The knowledge of these directors' talent clashes with the experience of the films themselves, resulting in anger, despair and disappointment.
  
  Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm fits into this category very neatly, although in terms of its problems it is unlike any of those mentioned. Where all three aforementioned flops were the director's chosen projects and therefore entirely their fault, The Brothers Grimm is closer to David Fincher's Alien 3 or David Lynch's Dune, potentially interesting projects undone by heavy-handed producers obsessed with hitting their target audience.
  
  Where Fincher wanted Alien 3 to be as dark and nihilistic as the original, the studios wanted a mainstream action film. Where Lynch saw Dune as a chance to expand his palette to create an immersive world, Dino DeLaurentis wanted a simplistic space fantasy that could cash in on the success of Star Wars. Both films have moments where the directors' true intentions shine through (Alien 3 moreso, it must be said), but for purists they remain so disappointing.
  
  It's not difficult to see why Gilliam would have been attracted to The Brothers Grimm. He is renowned for blending fantasy and reality together into one seamless whole, whether in the dream sequences of Brazil or the wild flights of fancy in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Many of his films are about the triumph of faith and imagination over the grim, restrictive realities we find ourselves in, a theme completely embodied in the character of Jakob Grimm. And much of his work, like Jabberwocky and The Fisher King, has a fairy tale element to it.
  
  Sadly, all these good omens are in vain, and simply make the end result all the more unbearable. Gilliam's clashes with Bob and Harvey Weinstein were wide-ranging, from the firing of cinematographer Nicola Pecorini for "working too slowly" to their refusal to let Matt Damon wear a prosthetic nose, for fear that it would "distract audiences from his star-studded good looks." These squabbles continued well into post-production with the supervision of ever-increasing effects shots. They ran on so long, that Gilliam was able to shoot the whole of Tideland before The Brothers Grimm was even released.
  
  The result of all this in-fighting, regardless of its cause or extent, is that The Brothers Grimm is not a Terry Gilliam film. It is a mainstream film which just happens to be directed by Terry Gilliam, with a visual style which is severely compromised and often completely derivative. Some moments seem to be cobbled together from Gilliam's previous work, in some kind of bizarre, ham-fisted self-parody. The woodland catapult feels like a lift from Time Bandits, while both the odd technology and the Grimms' armour seem to have escaped from Brazil. Elsewhere there are clear rip-offs of Sleepy Hollow (the look of the village), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the torture scenes), and -- most insultingly -- The Lord of the Rings.
  
  The derivative visuals can be traced to the film's over-reliance on CGI in place of more organic effects. Despite the lengthy post-production, which saw the release date pushed back almost a year, many of the effects look ropey and unfinished. The wolf's transformation is no great surprise because the wolf runs in such an odd way that we know it's a man underneath. The trees' moving branches, which seem to have escaped from The Evil Dead, are not threatening enough, nor is the scene of the horse devouring the child. Even when things get impressive, like the Ice Princess regenerating and then shattering into mirrored glass, we simply don't care because all the bad effects preceding it take us out of the fantasy and leave us feeling inert. In any case, Théoden's regeneration in The Two Towers is far more impressive, being quicker and largely unedited.
  
  But it's not just the bad effects which make this a stinker. The script is really third-rate, never managing to do justice either to the characters or the fairy tales. It was written by Ehren Kruger, who also wrote Gore Verbinski's abysmal remake of The Ring, and in its worst moments the film does feel like Pirates of the Caribbean. The storytelling is incoherent, the dialogue is flat and incomprehensible, and the actors have the distinct look of not knowing what is going on. The goofy comedy is especially out of place, being completely at odds with Gilliam's sensibilities. In Time Bandits or Baron Munchausen, dark and forbidding worlds are created into which humour is introduced to add depth. Here we have lots of bad slapstick, with people falling over each other in various mirthless ways.
  
  On top of all this, the film is completely miscast and badly acted. Even before we get to the individual actors, there is the issue of accents. Both Grimms speak in 'natural' English accents, which would be fine if everyone else did the same. Instead we have Jonathan Pryce nearly swallowing his words in a French accent, and Peter Stormare being impossible to understand as an Italian. Heath Ledger is quite simply all over the place, babbling his lines and stumbling around aimlessly, just as he did in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Matt Damon looks completely at sea, and Lena Headly is far too glamorous to play Angelica (Gilliam originally wanted Samantha Morton, but the Weinsteins effused in yet another act of genius). All the supporting cast look less like characters than rejects from the local freak show; the acting is hammy and over-the-top in a way which quickly stops being funny
  
  The Brothers Grimm is a soul-crushing experience for anyone who loves Terry Gilliam, or indeed anyone who appreciates genuine artistic talent over the demographic obsessions of studios. The film as a whole bares a strange resemblance to Army of Darkness, which stripped out all the colourful darkness of the earlier Evil Dead films to create a goofy mainstream romp which ultimately falls flat on its face. All of the darkness and real substance of Gilliam's greatest work has indeed been stripped away, and all that is left is a hollow shell vainly pumped full of cheap imitations. Even if one goes in with the lowest expectations -- say, having just seen Doctor Parnassus -- the overriding emotion will be either anger or despair. It's a real calamity in Gilliam's career, and based upon his subsequent work, he has yet to recover from it.

  Share This Review

• Matt Damon as Will Grimm
• Heath Ledger as Jake Grimm
• Jonathan Pryce as Delatombe
• Lena Headey as Angelika
• Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Mayor
• Richard Ridings
• Peter Stormare as Cavaldi
• Uma Thurman
• Tomás Hanák

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

• 
  Sleepy Hollow (80%)
• 
  The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (75%)
• 
  Stardust (75%)
• 
  Alice in Wonderland (90%)

• • Jake Grimm: It's this way Will!
  • Will Grimm: No, no, it's not, it's not. It's that way! Grandmother Toad told me!
  • Jake Grimm: What?
  • Will Grimm: Trust the toad!

• What actor played in A Knight's Tale, The Brother's Grimm, Casanova, Lords of Dogtown, and 10 Things I Hate About You?   Answer »
• Which movie plays Matt Damon and Heath Ledger like brothers?  Answer »
• Which actor has starred in these 3 films...A Knights Tale, Casanova, and The Brother's Grimm?   Answer »
• In what movie does Heath Ledger almost kiss his onscreen brother Matt Damon?  Answer »

• 
  The Brothers Grimm
  by maestra882004
  244 taken
• 
  GREAT movie
  by fb681695251
  31 taken
• 
  the brothers grimm
  by justusuzoma
  9 taken

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

• PrincessOf...
• irenepen14
• miszlhaine30
• MikealAllen
• princessle...
• chuankung1
• anabelblabla
• blackestro...

No recent headlines. Got one?

• 

  2012

  by wangyng
  46 Movies
• 

  Matt Damon

  by fb100000526596...
  11 Movies
• 

  Science Fiction & Fantasy

  by jameszqtan
  69 Movies
• 

  I liked it. .

  by btrfan14
  55 Movies
• 

  Netflix Queue

  by wordbit
  27 Movies