Fractured Fairy Tales
Magical awe eludes well-intentioned 'Brothers Grimm'

So much should have gone right in Terry Gilliam's visionary extravaganza, The Brothers Grimm, about the folklore-collecting German brothers who find themselves trapped in a real and dangerous fairy tale. From Time Bandits to 12 Monkeys, Gilliam has proven himself no stranger to the fantastic, the funny, and the surreal, and there are elements off all three in all well-told fairy tales.

But Gilliam never quite gets a grip on the Grimms. The story should have had so much more awe and passion for the mysteries of the unknown, as cheerful charlatan Will (Matt Damon) and bookish Jacob (Heath Ledger)—who sell themselves to gullible villagers as demon-eradicators in war-torn Napoleonic Europe—discover the existence of an eerie otherworld, and have to figure out how the story goes to save their lives. Brushes with characters who function as prototypes of Red Riding Hood and her wolf, the Gingerbread Man, Hansel and Gretel, and a Wicked Queen/Sleeping Beauty/ youth-sucking vampire (Monica Bellucci), should have had more of a magical fizz. And the absurdist Gilliam comedy that bubbles up throughout ought to have been funnier.

Gilliam's intentions are honorable and often clever. There's a dark wood with a mind of its own, where telescopic tree roots and branches slither out to engulf the unwary. (Since the Christians invaded, we're told, the once-sacred forest is now "just territory"). A brave, romantic woodsman's daughter (Lena Headey) not only communicates with the natural world, she functions as rescuer and would-be wolf-slayer. There's plenty of nutty Rube Goldberg-type "special effects" machinery as the brothers ply their shady trade; there's even an ancient, gnarled village witch just like the ones Gilliam himself used to play in Monty Python.

Jonathan Pryce is the brothers' droll antagonist, a cold, reptilian French general occupying the region, but Peter Stormare is exhaustingly slapstick as his Italian toady, who accompanies the Grimms on their adventure. Too much explosive mayhem undercuts the subtle nuancing of symbolic folklore. And there are too many gross-out gags that add nothing but nastiness for its own sake to a movie already overly violent and mean-spirited. Still, fairy tale and folklore enthusiasts should see it for the often intriguing ways Gilliam plays with the genre and interweaves the stories, and for glimpses of what might have been.

THE BROTHERS GRIMM With Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. Written by Ehren Kruger. Directed by Terry Gilliam. A Dimension Films release. (PG-13) 118 minutes. (**)
Review published in Good Times, Sept. 1, 2005