The Brothers Grimm (2005)
fantasy adventure
directed by : Terry Gilliam
featuring : Matt Damon - Heath Ledger - Jonathan Pryce - Lena Headley - Monica Bellucci
running time : 1 hour 58 minutes
Two men who have made a career out of spinning remarkable stories find themselves bringing them to life in this inventive fantasy inspired by the creators of some of the world's best-loved fairy tales. Will Grimm (Matt Damon) and his brother Jake Grimm (Heath Ledger) earn their living by traveling from village to village and vanquishing strange supernatural beasts that have been menacing the populace. Or at least that's what their clients think has been happening; as it happens, Will and Jake are confidence men who cleverly stage the ghostly attacks and then take payment for making the creatures they fabricated go away. One day, the brothers arrive in a town and offer to help its people drive away evil spirits, unaware that the community is bordered by a genuine enchanted forest, and that young girls in the village have been disappearing at a frightful rate. The Grimm Brothers must now learn how to deal with real magic, with the help of the lovely but fearless Angelika (Lena Headey). Directed by Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Grimm also stars Monica Bellucci, Peter Stormare, and Jonathan Pryce.

Incoherent and dull, Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm feels like it was edited by someone who was never given access to the shooting script. After an interesting setup that offers some very funny moments from Matt Damon, the film bogs down, losing track of the story and seeming like it has no interest in returning to it anytime in particular. This might be excusable if Gilliam's visual imagination could fill the gap, but the vast majority of the film seems to take place in the same dreary outdoor location, whose nooks and crannies become overly familiar to the viewer fairly quickly. Instead of bringing back fond memories of the best aspects of Time Bandits or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the miscalculation that is The Brothers Grimm recalls another infuriating film that ransacked the audience's collective memory of beloved characters, Stephen Sommers' atrocious Van Helsing.