Review of The Brothers Grimm (2005) by Brian C — 08 Dec 2009

This was a pretty dissapointing film. I'm a big fan of Terry Gilliam. He is a unique director who usually has pretty cool set designs and effect, original characters, and interesting plot elements. It's too bad he could not be at his full potential for this film.

I thought Heath Ledger and Matt Damon were perfectly cast as the Brothers Grimm, and Peter Stormare was pretty good as well. The visual effects were good but nothing special.

The story seemed unfocused and elements were all out of place. It started off promising, but began to dwindle down. It was pretty hard to follow at points with awkward editing and monotonous tone. Unlike 12 Monkeys, where you the audience is trying to find out what is happening alongside Bruce Willis, I just simply watched the movie and waited for the next fairytale character to pop up without really caring about what was going on.

I heard Gilliam had a lot of disputes with the producers and that can probably explain this less-than-half an effort.

While this was not a terrible film, it was not a very good one either. I have watched it twice and will probably watch it again sometime. I am very glad though that Gilliam went with a Gothic dark comedy instead of a family friendly Disney-ish film like Pirate of the Carribbean. Fans of Terry Gilliam and Heath Ledger will probably enjoy this film, but they will still see all the wasted potential that prevented a classic film.