Review of The Brothers Grimm (2005) by Les E — 18 Sep 2013

I genuinely liked this movie, not in an "OMG! I LOOOVE THIS!" sort of way, but more like that it was an entertaining diversion. Brothers Grimm is clearly Terry Gilliam's weakest movie, but even at his worst, this still packs in more than so many other bad movies.

I thought Heath Ledger & Matt Damon had good chemistry as brothers. Lena Headey's character was obviously thrown because someone felt there had to be a female lead in their somewhere, but her relationship with the brothers was almost null.

Still, Headey threw herself into that character, and gave an interesting twist on the whole damsel-in-distress trope. The overall look and feel accomplished a Burton-style tongue-in-cheek creepiness to evoke this idea of the birth of the Grimm fairy tales were.

But the CGI is more of a punishment to the viewer. It's pretty unacceptable for a film in 2005, relying heavily on CGI like this one, to be that crappy. They could have done better, or relied on how Gilliam used effects in the past instead of letting him or someone else blow the budget on something that looked that bad on the screen.