Review of The Brothers Grimm (2005) by Markb. — 12 Sep 2005

Once upon a time there was a filmmaker named Terry Gilliam whose last would-be effort, a gargantuan movie epic about Don Quixote, fell prey to all manner of evil spells, wicked elves, ogres and gremlins that prevented it from ever seeing fruition.

..but DID provide a fascinating how-it-didn't-get-made documentary. Gilliam's film work is that of an uncompromising independent spirit who often gets big budgets but calls his shots the way he sees 'em, like it or not.

..with predictably variable results that range from ballsy and bracing (Brad Pitt's singularly unhinged work in 12 Monkeys, the unexpectedly downbeat finale of the kiddie fantasy Time Bandits) to almost totally unendurable (Johnny Depp's obnoxious Hunter S.

Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, who spends two hours I'll never get back again making sad, miserable people he meets on his drug-addled odyssey even more sad and miserable). That's why it's a little disappointing to see Gilliam reining himself in, however slightly, for the Weinstein boys who, despite their loud pronouncements over the past decade about encouraging independent film, tend to sit on their directors (Tarantino, of course, being a rare and obvious exception) as tightly as Louis B.

Mayer did on his during the 1940s. A film about the famous fairy-tale compilers and retellers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm seems like a natural fit for Gilliam, but he's hobbled by a rather witless, pedestrian script by Ehren Kruger (whose other work, such as Arlington Road and Reindeer Games, suggests that he's a lot more comfortable dissecting present-day paranoia than from the past) that refers to classic stories ranging from Goldilocks to Snow White to Little Red Riding Hood so haphazardly and perfunctorily that you'd swear he was working off a checklist, and by title performances by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger that are completely submerged by the surroundings and spectacle.

Ultimately, none of this matters. As Gilliam has repeatedly proven since Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he is and remains a dazzling visual atmospherist and stylist who does peasant squalor as compellingly as he does patrician sumptuousness.

Simply put, there's nobody around who films grass, dead leaves, wood, thatching, dirt and mud more fascinatingly than Gilliam...and I'm not being sarcastic in the least; it's really hard to do! In fact, The Brothers Grimm may be the only 2005 film besides Robert Rodriguez' Sin City in which every single frame is.

..well, suitable for framing. (In fact, I'd even rank Gilliam slightly higher than Rodriguez in this category because The Brothers Grimm is nowhere near so computer-dependent.) This movie's amazing, sepia-dappled cinematography and design makes the fact that we'll never get to see Gilliam's Quixote film even more regrettable, but even Gilliam running at half-speed here should be enough to ensure that The Brothers Grimm, though a box office disappointment, should live happily ever after as a cult success.