Film Review: The Brothers Grimm (2005) D+

Date Viewed - 6/12/06
Venue - DVD

There’s an old lady in The Brothers Grimm who has only one line and repeats it often. It really resonates with the film. “Cursed!” An apt summary of this Terry Gilliam helmed disappointment that’s got some clever ideas, but doesn’t know what to do with them.

Matt Damon and Heath Ledger play the famous Grimm brothers in their pre-fairy tale writing days. They make their living in nineteenth century Germany as con artists, fooling feeble villagers into believing they’re being haunted and in need of the brothers’ paranormal elimination services (which is what EPA man Walter Peck suspected the Ghostbusters of all along). The brothers exorcise the pesky spirit, the village rejoices, and the brothers get paid.

Things go awry when they finally encounter a village with some real paranormal activity. Then it’s up to the bumbling pair to save the day for once.

Speaking of Ghostbusters, Damon and Ledger play the brothers as clever buffoons, and the script tries for a lot of humor with the pair and their schemes. Unlike Ghostbusters, none of it is very funny and due to their greedy motives, the pair aren’t the most likable fellows on screen. That’s a big problem here, there’s seemingly no one to really like.

Also not working are attempts to be scary. There’s some dark imagery here and some gruesome creatures/bugs/etc., but the cg special FX are horrible, the worst I’ve seen in a major studio release in ages. Utterly distracting, poorly done, and not frightening.

There is some merit in the concept behind all this, that the Grimm brothers were paranormal investigators of some kind in their time. But the film can’t make up its mind if it wants to be scary or funny, and in the process winds up being neither.

The Brothers Grimm was shelved for quite a long time (a year or more) by Miramax before it finally saw a release, and there were reports director Terry Gilliam clashed with the Weinsteins over creative control. It shows. There’s a lack of creative unity storywise, and the bad cg is emblematic of a joyless, ‘let’s get this thing over with’ attitude.