I managed to catch The Brothers Grimm over the weekend. And if it's not too late, I'm going to warn you off.
Know that I am no adorer of Terry Gilliam just on general principle. 12 Monkeys is one of my favorite movies (#24), but Brazil left me cold and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen put me to sleep. (No, I haven't seen The Fisher King.) There are "maverick filmmakers" out there I respect, but none solely for the fact they're mavericks -- you have to make a good movie to earn my respect.
I felt about The Brothers Grimm rather like I felt about Tim Burton's first Batman movie: you can put a bunch of pretty pictures up on the screen in rapid-fire succession, but they don't constitute a plot. Batman, at the very least, had some attempt at characterization, which is more than I can say for The Brothers Grimm. Everyone in the movie is either flat and uninteresting (the title characters) or a ridiculous one-note caricature (basically everyone else but the female lead).
The story, such as it is, is a careless melange of a bunch of classic fairy tales. I use the word classic a bit loosely, for although the most central tales are indeed works of the real Brothers Grimm, they are among the most obscure of their tales. At least, to this American viewer. One of the people who saw the film with me, who had taken a class on fairy tales and folklore in college on route to her English degree, informed me she believed the stories in question were more well-known in Europe. Imagine shipping a movie overseas in which Johnny Appleseed encounters a giant blue ox being ridden by Pecos Bill, who is whipping Casey Jones as he frantically races to build a train track that will soon be used by an engine driven by Annie Oakley. Lost? Hell, I made it up, and I have no idea what's going on.
Which is pretty much how I felt watching The Brothers Grimm. Pretty at times, but that just isn't enough. I give it a C-.
3 comments:
was it better than Van Helsing?
A pity. I've rather taken to stories that combine elements of other story universes.
Perhaps it will do better overseas.
Sad to say, I didn't even realize this was a Gilliam movie from the trailers. I guess he's playing it safe after his Don Quixote failure - see documentary Lost In La Mancha, for how to fail to make a cursed film. Gotta love Terry Gilliam for Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas and all those Monty Python animations.
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