New Movie: The Brothers Grimm

[SonOfBeastSucks]

I saw a brand new movie earlier today, The Brother's Grimm, and was quite dissapointed. It picks up a little towards the end, but I just found it hard to sit through. It is a fairy tale I guess and covers them all.... Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Sleeping Beauty and more. It sounded good to me, but I ended up not liking it much at all. You have been warned!

Edited August 28, 2005 by SonOfBeastSucks

[Jonathan]

Interesting; that's definitely the first time I've heard anyone refer to it as a "Heath Ledger movie". Anyway, here is my review that I posted in the movies thread:

 

"The Brothers Grimm"

 

Rather than fight yet another war with Hollywood (see: "Brazil", "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", and "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"), Terry Gilliam took off his gloves and allowed the Weinsteins and Miramax to force their will upon him. With his new film "Tideland" coming out soon, Gilliam chose to focus his efforts on molding it, while allowing "The Brothers Grimm" to go wherever the studio wanted to take it. The result is by far the most commercial film to Gilliam's name, but in this case watered-down Gilliam is better than no Gilliam, and his first film in seven years ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in 1998) is a fun one.

 

"The Brothers Grimm" certainly looks like a Terry Gilliam movie, loaded with extravagant visuals and wide angled shots, although the $80 million budget did allow for his first use of CGI (it really isn't too bad, though), and it does not have the incredibly surreal feeling to it that most Gilliam films have. It takes a bit of time to get used to Matt Damon (as Will Grimm) and Heath Ledger, moreso Damon, as Ledger is surprisingly good as Jacob Grimm. The film was much more humorous than I had expected, and has plenty of subtle Gilliam humor. Many will find Peter Stormare' Cavaldi character to be extremely annoying, but I thought he was hilarious, and one of the highlights of the movie. Jonathan Pryce returns to another Gilliam movie as Delatombe, and does a decent job, although his character was a little overly abnoxious at times. Lena Headey is good as Angelika, and Monica Bellucci also pulls off a good performance, although unfortunately she does not get a significant amount of screen time.

 

The plot of "The Brothers Grimm" wanders a lot, and I actually thought the movie was winding down at around the 90 minute mark, but this works somewhat to the film's advantage, as it makes a fairly straightforward plot seem slightly less predictable. The film is much sillier than the promos may lead to believe, and that probably will not come us much of a surprise to big Gilliam fans. Unlike previous Gilliam movies, however, there really is no substance behind what we see on screen, so what we get is really the first 'popcorn flick' with Gilliam's name on it. Like all Terry Gilliam movies, the reaction will be mixed, and there will be some people who absolutely love it, and some who name it their worst film of the year. As far as I'm concerned, "Grimm" does not hold a candle to Terry Gilliam's previous films, but it is one of the better 'big summer movies', and I certainly felt my time was well spent watching it.

 

3 stars (out of 4)

[BelizeIt]

I've read several reviews on this movie, and most have been negative.

 

A good site to check out about movies in general is RottenTomatoes.com

 

They give reviews from professional critics (Roger Ebert) and others who watch a LOT of movies.

 

Personally, I'll be passing on this movie. Overall, this summers movie choices have been weak!!! It's of no surprise that the movie tickets sales for the industry are down.

[zburns999]

^I agree. Last summer there were like three or four movies I REALLY wanted to see, but this year there was one, Batman Begins. At least that was an awesome movie.

[Jose Eber]

Yah, I heard that too from my brother that Batman was decent.

 

I don't know, looked kinda gay from the outset -- I mean, there were so many major male characters Bale, Freeman, Neesen, Caine, Oldman-- whatever happened to the duo of Batman and his chick? What about a female villain? Man remember Michelle Pheifer?! Wow. Could watch her all day in the cat suit.

 

WHat I found odd about the Brothers Grimm movie is that it shifted marketing gears midway.

 

Now trailers don't talk about how Brothers Grimm were duping towns out of money building fake monster etc. (only seen the trailers)

 

I don't know....how is the imax print?

[BarryH]

It's odd that how the biggest movie of the summer is about penguins.

[robbalvey]

There is a reason why we have a "Movies" thread! If you'd like to get responses to your original post, please copy and paste your post into that thread.

 

Otherwise....

 

--Robb "Thread closed." Alvey