Rescued by a plot that's just good enough, and acting and special effects that, for all the movie's flaws, are dazzling enough to make it worth watching.
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A large number of critics have lambasted "The Brothers Grimm" because it takes two real-life ethnographers and basically turns them into cartoonish "Ghostbusters" who work a con like the knight and fire-breather in "Dragonheart." In a way, that's surprising, considering no one raised a fuss over two Zorro movies that played fast and loose with the legend of Joaquin Murieta. Then again, writer Ehren Kruger ("The Ring," "Scream 3") really messes with the facts—and fairy tales—of the Grimms.
"Once upon a time: 1796" the opening title reads, and we're introduced to the Grimms as young boys. Jakob, called "Jake," returns with but a handful of beans after being sent to sell the cow—as in "Jack and the Beanstalk." In reality, Wilhelm (Matt Damon) was the younger Grimm and Jakob (Heath Ledger) the elder, but then the ridiculous allusion to picked-on little Jake and the magic beans wouldn't work. Here, Will is the older ladies man and Jakob the younger is a socially stunted artist. So much for biography. Then again, the first indication that this was going to be no straight biopic was in the opening credits that listed Terry Gilliam (of "Brazil" and Monty Python fame) as director. Come on. What did anyone expect?
The thing is, even if you cut this movie some slack for taking liberties with the facts, you're still left with an uneven film. There's no delicate way to say that the movie disappoints, because some scenes are just plain dumb. The first time you see these guys dressed in over-the-top armor with crossbows trying to hold a witchy spirit in their cross-sights, you think, Oh no. Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.. But that's nothing compared to later scenes, when, for example, a gingerbread man appears out of mud. Or the entire burgoo simmering in a pot into which Kruger and Gilliam seem to have tossed bits and pieces of Grimm fairy tales starts to bubble. Little Red Riding Hood is here, though when you listen to the commentary you understand just how little research Gilliam did after he remarks that Jakob ironically gets it wrong when he writes down "Little Red Cape." Excuse me? That's a lot closer to "Little Red Cap," or Rotkäppchen, which was the original title of the Grimm brothers tale.
Pieces of "Cinderella," "Red Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rapunzel," "The Pied Piper," "Sleeping Beauty," and other tales are dropped here and there like crumbs in the forest, but they bear little resemblance to the originals. Though some may take delight in finding these morsels, others will think them just a bastardization of folk tales that, by themselves, offered so much charm and promise for cinematic treatment. The most random and inexplicable fairy-tale allusion comes when we see Jake and Will dressed in drag scrubbing the floors. Couldn't anyone think of a better way to insert a Cinderella allusion?
Purists will cringe the most, though, when a reference pops up to "The Princess and the Pea," which was an original tale penned by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. Is that going too far? Well, picture doing a Western in which you have plains Indians and you name one of them Geronimo or Cochise—two actual, well-known southern Apaches. Or you're doing a wacky film about Elvis and, amid all the references to his songs, suddenly there's a reference to a tune that Neil Sedaka did with the implication that it was Elvis. It matters. There are limits to how much you can twist the facts for artistic purposes unless you really twist them so it becomes outrageous, as in the entire premise behind the movie "Dick."
The problem is, "The Brothers Grimm" isn't outrageous. Gilliam said on the commentary that he can't do a movie without injecting some humor. I wish he would have injected more. The tone is just plain odd—funny when you thought the situation called for serious, mean-spirited when you thought it should be funny, and macabre when you thought realism might have been appropriate. Sometimes the tone is mixed, and you just sit and watch in stunned obedience, not really loving it and not really hating it. When you think about it, though, all the references to fairy tales seem to have been a burden or a liability for the filmmakers, rather than the delight you would have expected them to be.
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[release]20101[/release]