THE BROTHERS GRIMM

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE for folklorists in trouble...

By Abbie Bernstein     August 26, 2005

THE BROTHERS GRIMM is a physically gorgeous, occasionally affecting, sometimes annoying and often messy fantasy that posits that famed fairytale writers Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger), called mostly "Will" and "Jake" here, lived through a lot of supernatural weirdness before they made names for themselves writing about it.

After a prologue establishing Jake's credulity and Will's skepticism in their childhood days, we're in 1811 Germany, where Will and Jake, big-time con artists, are bilking a village to exorcist "spirits" that are actually products of their special effects. Their reputation backfires when they're dragooned by the French general (Jonathan Pryce) in charge of the occupying forces in the area to track down what he believes is another con artist who's kidnapping little girls in the forest around Marbaden. What the audience knows and the Brothers Grimm find out Jake is much quicker than Will to catch on is that there's an honest-to-badness supernatural force at work in the woods.

Director Terry Gilliam does a splendid job of imbuing each frame of the fairytale myth sections with exquisite detail, like the very best of children's book illustrations brought to three-dimensional life. He also has a lot of fun with the slightly goofy but big-hearted and imaginative Jake, who is played with wit and a total lack of vanity by the highly engaging Ledger.

The screenplay by Ehren Kruger (with an oddly-credited assist from director Gilliam and Tony Grisoni) is truly clever at incorporating pieces of many different well-known stories into a suitably Grimm-esque yarn with a frisson of horror to enmesh the brothers. A subplot that seems intended to be comedic, regarding the Italian torturer (Peter Stormare) who serves the general, just drags on without generating many real laughs (and incorporates a really gratuitous, annoying dead animal joke), which tends to both slow the pace and give the tone a slightly schizophrenic feel.

On balance, though, THE BROTHERS GRIMM is a fairly sumptuous fantasy with some good shivery horror elements, which should please fans of the genre and especially fans of Gilliam.