Terry Gilliam has had his ups and downs in the world of the surreal, with films ranging from the successful Time Bandits and Brazil to the overly ambitious The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Gilliam has taken on the world of fairy tales in The Brothers Grimm, a harebrained concoction of fairy tale characters and rewritten history that is more grim than Grimm.
All but unrecognizable under their makeup are Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, respectively. Here they are not the sainted German scholars who collected the folk legends of their country to share with future generations, but a pair of con artists out to hoodwink the citizenry of French-occupied Germany during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Thus the historic Grimm Brothers have become the centerpieces of a new, elaborate, very dark and not very good fairy tale.
Will and Jake, as they bill themselves in the film, travel from town to town with a pair of accomplices and a wagonful of elaborate stage props and costumes. Upon arrival, they declare that they will exorcise the monsters and demons and witches that are supposedly terrorizing the populace -- for a price.
But when the French governor, General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce), figures out their chicanery, he forces them to deal with a real magical curse in an enchanted forest near the village of Marbaden, where young maidens have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The boys engage a local forest hunter, Angelika (Lena Headey), with whom both Grimm brothers fall in love as she leads them to the treetop home of a 500-year-old dead queen (Monica Bellucci) whose magic mirror can bring her back to life.
Ehren Kruger's script self-consciously weaves elements from such fairy tales as Hansel & Gretel (here known as Hans and Greta), Rapunzel, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood into the plot. Often the results look heavyhanded and awkward, especially since some of the fairy-tale elements seem more real than the "real" characters.
Many of the "real" characters are played hammily, especially Peter Stormare as the buffoonishly overblown Cavaldi, an Italian who has a soft heart despite the fact that he calls himself "the Great Cavaldi, master of the torturing arts." He's the right-hand man to Pryce's heartless French general. Played by Stormare with tongue firmly in cheek, he's a comic opera figure who takes his character to great heights, overwhelming any simple charms it and the plot might harbor.
Soon the brothers, who are played by Damon and Ledger as though they were a couple of frat boys on a lark, and the beauteous Angelika are in that enchanted forest, with its bugs, snakes and birds, not to mention trees that can uproot themselves to lumber around the landscape or whack the characters with their branches. Jake Grimm believes in all the magical tales he has heard and is happy to have found a "real" folk tale in the enchanted forest. Will is savvier and wants to know how he can make money on the deal.
In the movie's strangest sequence, a sludge ball comes to life to kidnap and devour a child, then turns itself into the Gingerbread Man, who runs away as fast as he can.
But much of what should be magical in The Brothers Grimm looks leaden, thanks to its overzealous performers. The movie is long, too, at nearly two hours, and gets hung up in a myriad of subplots and fairy tale characters. The real Brothers Grimm would probably have pared the whole thing down and made something wonderful out of what here all seems rather silly.
**
The Brothers Grimm
Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey, Jonathan Pryce, Monica Bellucci.
Rated: PG, contains comic violence.
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