a review.

The Brothers Grimm.

Directed by Terry Gilliam, Produced by the Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

at one point in the late 90s or circa 2000, i realized that i had, through no conscious effort, seen every movie terry gilliam ever directed. so i suppose you could say that i'm something of a fan of his and also somewhat versed in his filmmaking style and preoccupations. this movie will not go down as one of his best.

the basic plot is thus: it is the early nineteenth century, in western germany. the brothers grimm, jakob and wilhelm (or jake and will, played by heath ledger and matt damon respectively) are con artists who employ slow sidekicks to "haunt" towns for a few weeks, at which point the brothers ride up and perform shiny exorcisms. the commander of the invading french forces, played by a misused jonathan pryce, has on his hands a german village with a real haunted forest. he kidnaps the brothers grimm and sends them off to, as he thinks, expose their fellow charlatan.

so far, so good. it has all the hallmarks of a good terry gilliam flick: stories, medievalism, the question of where reality stops and where imagination begins, and jonathan pryce.

but it doesn't work. oh sure, the costumes are marvelous, the scenery and camerawork are breathtaking. but matt damon is way too much of a "movie star" to be in a gritty little flick like this. i'd almost go so far as to say brad pitt and bruce willis are better actors than matt damon. and i don't think at this point there's any question about heath ledger. but matt damon looks like he's acting like wilhelm grimm; the willing suspension of disbelief never really gets there. although i suppose that could be chalked up somewhat to the severe lack of character development anyone gets.

as for jonathan pryce... in any other movie, he'd be at the beginning, sending the brothers off to this remote little village somewhere, and then he'd drop out and you wouldn't see him again. but gilliam keeps returning to him, like a bad penny or a hangnail you just can't stop pulling at. he tries to throw in a whole sub-plot and makes the character an out-and-out sadist. and another seeming obsession of gilliam is torture. but these scenes pale in comparison to some of his others. they lack the creepiness of michael palin in Brazil, nor are they farcical like the sultan's opera in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. they just feel tacked on with minimal relevance to the plot. they don't give any urgency to the quest of the brothers. you just want the movie to get back to the village and its forest.

that liminal space between storyteller and audience, between dream and waking is where gilliam has always shown himself master, and in that respect, this movie is no disappointment. and while he pulls no punches visually and seems to enjoy putting gross stuff on the screen, it's never felt nearly as superfluous as it did in this movie. i actually found myself wanting more of matt damon and less of jonathan pryce (and his really irritating torturer sidekick (peter stormare) and the could both have totally lost the accents, argh).

the village trapper, a young woman whose family were the first to fall victim to the haunted forest, and the mad queen both seriously needed more screen time. the movie could have probably been a whole lot better if all the characters had been given some serious development, and the story of the forest given 90% of the content and time.

i'd probably give this movie two whatevers out of four. how about carrots? does anyone rate anything by carrots? i'll give it two carrots out of four for the main plot, the scenery, the costumes, the camerawork, and everyone's acting but matt damon's, jonathan pryce's, and peter stormare's. it's not a bad film. but it's not a good one either.