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Directed by Terry GilliamCast
Matt Damon (Wilhelm Grimm)
Heath Ledger (Jacob Grimm)
Monica Bellucci (Mirror Queen)
Lena Headey (Angelika)
Jonathan Pryce (General Delatombe)
Peter Stormare (Cavaldi)
Tomás Hanák (The Woodsman)
Seven years have passed since Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys) released his last film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He almost managed to make one of his dream projects, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but a chain of disasters that would turn Murphy’s head upside sunk the production almost as soon as it started. (For a chronicle of Murphy’s famous law in action, watch the excellent documentary about the failed production, Lost in La Mancha). Problematic productions often seem to plague imaginative former-Monty Python member Gilliam, and The Brothers Grimm followed the tradition, with production problems stemming from MGM pulling the plug on the film, with Miramax coming to the rescue, and numerous creative clashes between Gilliam and executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The Weinsteins fired Gilliam’s original cinematographer and prevented the casting of Samantha Morton as the female lead, for whom both Gilliam and Matt Damon had campaigned. Production was shut down for six months at one point, and Gilliam had time to complete the movie Tidelands in between.
Despite all these hardships, Gilliam did manage to complete the film, and it has turned out far better than you might expect considering the difficulties surrounding. However, The Brothers Grimm ranks as lesser Terry Gilliam. It has his lunatic stamp, his love of period details, and his eye for startling, dream-like visuals, but it also falls prey to his worst flaws as a director: narrative excess that turns into narrative confusion, and superficial characterization. Fans of the director will no doubt find a lot about the film to enjoy, but anyone unfamiliar with his baroque comic style might just consign The Brothers Grimm to the old toy chest and forget about it.
The actual Brothers Grimm, Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (seen to the right), were German folklore collectors in the early 19th century who published popular volumes of fairy-tales in 1812 and 1815. Their versions of these fairy-tales, which had existed for many centuries, would turn into the ‘standard’ versions which we know today. Among the fairy-tales that they immortalized are “Hansel and Gretel,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” “Tom Thumb,” and “The Pied Piper of Hamlin.”
Gilliam’s movie fictionalizes Jakob and Wilhem (now anglicized to Jacob and Will) as wandering con-artists in French-occupied Germany of the early 1800s. With their assistants, they stage various supernatural hauntings and menaces, then convice townsfolk to pay them to eliminate these horrors. The reputation of the Brothers spreads far enough that a French General, Delatombe (Gilliam standy-by Jonathan Pryce), orders them to the town of Marbaden to learn why young girls have vanished in the forest there. He also sends his right-hand man, the insane Cavalli (Peter Stormare, doing an overwrought theatrical Italian accent) to accompany them. However, the forest of Marbaden has real fairy-tale horrors inside it, which means that the con artists have to find a way to combat magical curses without their masters discovering that they have never actually confronted anything supernatural that wasn’t of their own manufacture.
The magical forest of Marbaden gives Gilliam an opportunity to engage in references to a slew of the real Brothers Grimm fairy tales: “Rapunzel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and especially “Little Red Riding Hood.” The Big Bad Wolf of this story (played in humanoid form by Tomás Hanák) is quite an impressive design and effect. But Gilliam’s over-reliance on the style to tell the story makes the first hour of the film a cluttered and noisy mess. Gilliam’s substitutes ‘crazy’ performances for story and narrative, and this especially damages the two main characters. 
Jacob and Will do have an important conflict between them: hunky Will is a cynic who doesn’t believe in supernatural matters, and Jacob is a nervous true-believer. But most of this gets lost in the overdone antics, and Heath Ledger—although hiding his matinee idol appearance—doesn’t generate the right feeling with his characterization of Jacob. The Brothers Gimm have very little screen presence for characters who should feel like legends. The weak performance from leading lady Lena Headey as a forest tracker who has lost her sisters to the mysterious forces of the woods doesn’t help matters at all. Gilliam made the right choice to cast the excellent Samantha Morton, and the Weinsteins’ interference here in the casting damaged the movie.
The film seems to find its feet, or at least its purpose, as the French burn down the forest and Jacob and Will must face the Mirror Queen (played elegantly by Monica Bellucci), the magical spirit who has directed the kidnappings from her crumbling raven-guarded tower in the forest. The frenetic pace of the earlier scenes works much better here, when the action should naturally be ramping up. Not all the details make sense here either, but the main thrust of what is going on remains clear enough to get audiences rolling at last.
As usual with Gilliam, there are some absolutely astounding and inventive visuals: hordes of insects shutting sarcaphogus lids over sleeping children, great flights of ravens through mossy storybook forests, and human faces cracking apart like mirrors. The most remarkable and disturbing scene turns the Gingerbread Man story in a version of The Blob!
The Brothers Grimm is ultimately minor Terry Gilliam; it seems his heart wasn’t in this one, and perhaps the forthcoming Tidelands will have a more deeply felt execution. However, lesser Gilliam is still better than best thing Chris Columbus has ever done. If only Terry Gilliam had taken on Van Helsing, we might have had something more interesting than an aggravating videogame.