The Brothers Grimm

Year of Release: 2005
Director: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey

This is a film that I just happened to randomly stumble upon whilst moseying around DVD aisles. I've always been a fan of fantasy type films so I thought this would be very much up my street. The film is based on the fantastical fairy tales written by the legendary storytellers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Grimm brothers, played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, are a pair of con artists who travel from town to town promising to rid them of terrifying monsters and demons in exchange for large sums of money. But their good deeds are not all what they seem as the brothers use cunning trickery to stage these attacks from all kinds of ghostly and mythical creatures. Following the defeat of these non-existent creatures, the unwitting town is left feeling joyous and safe whilst the brothers leave as victorious, slightly richer heroes. But their reign of trickery is brought to an abrupt end when the two find themselves in a real enchanted forest wherein a number of young girls have gone missing. Unsurprisingly, the forest proves to be no match for their tricks and traps and so the brothers must learn how to fight against real magic in a desperate bid to find the missing girls before it’s too late.

     I have to say, I thought this film would be much better than it was. I'm a big fan of fantastical, magical movies but this one really failed to impress me. The visual effects in the film are probably its strongest point. It is very visually entertaining and it has a lot of impressive special effects, such as the moving trees in the forest and the ageing queen. The effects do look quite realistic and so you can happily sit and watch it without having to sit there and exclaim “well that didn't look real!” I always find that if things look too unrealistic it’s hard to really get into the story. But visual effects aside, I felt that the plot just wasn't strong enough. The scenes in the enchanted forest and the rescue of the village were drawn out for far too long that towards the end I found myself rapidly losing interest. I also found that some scenes were just far too absurd that they were almost laughable. The scenes in which a young girl is captured in a sticky spiders web type substance hanging from the mouth of a horse which then promptly swallows her whole was one such ridiculous example. But nothing compared to the part where a giant blob of muddy water, complete with beady eyes and a devilish grin, captured young girl in the village who then turned into a rather psychotic version of the gingerbread man. Whilst this did give me a bit of a laugh, it was just a bit too daft to ever find believable. With its promising storyline and strong cast, including highly acclaimed actors Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, I was expecting this film to make much of an impression than it did.

My rating: 6/10