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THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005) Director: Terry Gilliam. Hacktors: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Stormare. Rating/5: The lowdown: This is a kids' movie, right? Perhaps so, but it's a pretty dark, twisted and violent one which surely only just scraped a PG-13 in the States. Former Monty Python team member Terry Gilliam's perennially warped imagery makes him just the man to bring the story of the Brothers Grimm to celluloid. It's about time, too, seeing as his last movie was 1998's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.     Of course, it's not really the true story: that would have simply been a tale about two German brothers in the 19th Century who collected and passed on scary folk tales. No, Gilliam's story - scripted by Scream 3 scribe Ehren Krueger - sees Will (Damon) and Jacob (Ledger) as a pair of roaming charlatans who are paid good money to rid European villages of witches and demons which don't exist. The dodgy duo hit problems, however, when the evil General Delatombe figures out their game and threatens them with death by snails. Unless, of course, they will go to the village of Marbaden and find out why its children keep vanishing. When they get there, they soon discover that real supernatural evil is afoot... Good points: Gilliam is obviously having a great time bringing brutal fairytales to life. In the process, he manages some surprisingly frightening imagery, made all the more disturbing by the fact that terrible things seem to be happening to children. I was shocked by a scene in which a bizarre mud monster steals one kid's eyes, nose and mouth, leaving him quite literally faceless. We also see a couple of severed heads, for instance, and a branch erupting from one unfortunate soldier's mouth, a second before he's sucked under a living tree.     Damon and Ledger are also having fun playing against type, even if their English accents do waver from time to time - Damon's rather resembles that of David St Hubbins from Spinal Tap. Thankfully, British newcomer Lena Headey is on hand as tough cookie Angelika to show them how it's done - and provide the audience's red-blooded males with some eye candy. Fargo's excellent Peter Stormare plays Delatombe's torturing henchman in much the same way that he seems to approach all roles these days: with the intention of eating every last piece of scenery. Distinguished Brit actor Jonathan Pryce, meanwhile, makes a memorably cold-eyed General. Bad points: A lot of the production is very obviously studio-bound, despite having been located in Prague. While the sets are quite sumptuous and often magical, we're rarely fooled into believing that the Brothers are traipsing through genuine forests. The CGI effects, too, could have done with a cash injection. Perhaps because difficult targets have been set (stuff like fur and water), the standard is generally a notch or two below the current state-of-the-art. This is possibly because the film's release was delayed for a year, while Gilliam bickered with Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax, whose Dimension company are now releasing it.     Plot-wise, it all goes a bit mad at the end, but I can live with that, from a story concerning magic. Early on, too, it's not entirely clear why Delatombe wants the Brothers to visit Marbaden or what exactly he expects two apparent con-men to achieve there. Ah, but who cares? They're there, and scary stuff happens. Overall: Harry Potter and The Lord Of The Rings may have popularised magic, but there's some demented stuff in The Brothers Grimm which you especially wouldn't see in the former. It may be a little creaky and rough in places, hinting at its troubled genesis, but I sometimes like creaky and rough. Bottom line: it's funny, it's occasionally frightening and most of all it's fun. Support it and maybe Hollywood will let Gilliam indulge his insanity some more. Release Date: It hit the States on August 26, 2005. In the UK it arrives on November 4. [Reviews Menu] [Home] © Copyright Slasherama 2002-present