Once upon a time…
Kids everywhere live for those words. I still adore fairy tales, but when I was a kid? Couldn’t get enough. I’d scour school book sales for stories; I read “The Little Match Girl,” “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “Toads and Diamonds” until I could practically recite them word for word. Many fairy tales live on in one form or another, characters and premises twisting and turning until they take the shape of a new blockbuster, today’s form of fireside tale. (That’s probably why I like movies so much.) The Brothers Grimm strips away the pretense of a new and different story and gives our inner child what it wants: a fairy tale. But this film gets caught up in the trappings of the tale and in its eagerness to entertain, forgets to add elements that would make it memorable.
The movie itself is a sort of modified Trickster tale, a kind of “The Brave Little Tailor” with two protagonists instead of one. The two Grimm brothers, Will and Jake, make a living by lifting curses and slaying monsters . . . or so it seems. In reality they’re fakes, staging elaborate shows, complete with burning crucifixes and swooping witches (all with a little help from their two henchmen). Overly superstitious villagers are more than willing to let the brothers cure their town’s ills — but the only creatures the brothers have defeated so far are deep in the villager’s imaginations. When the brothers are arrested as con artists and asked to solve a case involving missing children, they find that they are put to the test when they’re faced with a real curse.
There’s a good balance of humor and suspense in this film, and having the brothers run into a domineering French official lends a nice touch of real history. The story itself is a little choppy, with a prologue that seems to serve no purpose other than to let the audience know a little about each brothers personality — something that could have easily been discovered in the next ten minutes of the film. In terms of the tales themselves, I wasn’t keen on how several different fairy tales all seem to spring from one particular incident. These fairy tale characters are trotted out for a minute or two, long enough for the audience to have an “Aha!” moment, then they’re exited off stage quickly so the main plot can continue. Did I like seeing these characters? Sure. But it felt more like the movie was parading around archetypes in order to pad a threadbare story instead of to further the action along.
As the brothers, Matt Damon and Heath Ledger work well together, but don’t have the chemistry needed to be convincing as brothers. Lena Headey, as their forest guide/love interest, tries her best to inject some life into a female character that seems placed in the story just so they could have a chick in there somewhere.
The cinematography is fantastic, and the colors remind me of films like In The Company of Wolves and Willow. The costumes are detailed and appropriate; villagers wear yards of homespun while officers and royalty wear embroidery and silk. The sets look lived in rather than just pasted up, and though the forest doesn’t look very real, the whole point of a fairy tale is that forests are enchanted places that have a reality all their own, so the overly lush decay fits in well with the movie. The CGI and other effects don’t hit you over the head, but in this movie, you expect trees to pick up and move and creatures to form out of mud and clay. So the effects blend in. Effects makeup (especially the aging effects makeup) could have been better — one particularly decrepit character looks like old papier mache rather than old wrinkled skin.
Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits) works best when he’s directing his own screenplay, letting his muse go wherever it feels most at home. This screenplay, written by Ehren Kruger (Reindeer Games, The Ring) is like the Tin Man; bright and shiny, but hollow. There are many touches that remind you who’s in the driver’s seat (including a few silly bits that seemed straight out of Monty Python), but the film has no direction. It heads toward its finish dutifully, but there’s nothing that makes you care about the characters, let alone makes you wonder what could happen next. It’s an enjoyable romp, but it has nothing that would have a filmgoer take away anything from the theater except an empty popcorn tub.
If you’re a fan of Terry Gilliam, go. If the names on the marquee strike you, head out. But if it’s a real tale your inner child is after, you may be disappointed.
(Miramax, 2005)
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