The Brothers Grimm Review; In French Occupied Germany there was no word for Subtly

The Brothers Grimm

Prior to viewing The Brothers Grimm (2005) I more recall the trailer sucking but then I saw that it was written by Terry Gilliam and starred Matt Damon, Health Ledger, Lena Heady and featured Monica Bellucci and I then thought, “Hey, maybe this won’t be so bad.” Then I watched it.

Here is me being totally and 100% objective, The Brothers Grimm is one of the worse pieces of movie vomit and I regret watching it.

Matt Damon as Will and Health Ledger as Jacob with Lena Heady as Angelika

The movie starts the Grimm brother’s sister is dying and Jacob, the younger one I think maybe who cares though, gets magic beans instead which Will, the older, gets mad as magic is bogus, can you guess where this plot is going?

But enough of that scene, now Jacob and Will are older. Jacob is a scholarly guy who knows legends and stuff and Will likes ladies but not magic. They scam towns based on legends and stuff. Then we see little red riding getting attacked by something.

Jacob and Will get in trouble with some French dude who has this crazy Italian minion-person because little girls are being taken by something spooky scary. Later we also see a Gretel knock-off get spirited away (That is a better movie I should have watched that).

So Jacob and Will and their crew which featured heavy fake accent Italian guy go to the Village to check things out. There they ask for guide who knows the woods where the little ones are being taken. This where they meet Angelika who knows the ways of the spooky forest where trees move and only Grandmother toad knows the right way. She takes them to a creepy tower that was once home to a vain Queen who caught the plague. Later that night another girl is taken. And they again get in trouble with French dude and it was at this point I wanted to turn this shit off because one “joke” or “gag” involved a kitten getting kicked into a fan of blades.

Let’s wrap this plot up because really this movie is shit, turns out said Queen or rather the Mirror Queen was given immortality but not eternal youth and beauty, so she got Angelika’s father to be her woodsmen and take the girls for some spell by the blood moon. Will learns to believe in magic and Jacob and they save the day by breaking the Mirror Queen’s mirror and all the little girls are a-okay.

Health Ledger as Jacob

Ok before I really start ripping into this shlock, I want to invite you into the first thought I had with this movie. It takes place in the 1700’s at some point and the movie opens with the poor Grimms giving money to Jacob to get a doctor for their nameless sister but he gets the magic beans.

Here is my issue with the scene, the kid had FUCKING GLASSES! Do know how valuable those were back then? He probably could have gotten two doctors and the cow back for those things. I get it was a character signifier but FUCK YOU movie! No! If I know their names, I can bloody figure shit out later of who is who. I can’t do that logic jump. It’s like why not just put a gold clock on the fire place while you’re at it. Also I had an issue with the only thing of them bringing up the beans throughout the movie but not their sister who didn’t even get a name, could have called her Plot-Point-Erlla. I didn’t know she had dead except in passing, really it could have been their hamster and it would have had the same impact the movie gave it.

Matt Damon as Will with as Laura Greenwood Sasha under a spell

Saying this movie has an identity problem is an understatement. Since Terry Gilliam wrote it, it has like a dark comedy aspect but the tone and direction seems to be more adventure fantasy. While dark comedies and adventure fantasy are not mutually exclusive the genre/tone seems to be more combative in this movie than coalescing into a narrative.

It’s almost like two people had different visions of what this movie should be and couldn’t cooperate. Also it doesn’t help that now of the jokes are not even remotely funny. Like that poor Kitten, I mean you could see it coming but it wasn’t funny, maybe had it gone through the fans and was just shaven would have been funny because the point of said joke was the Italian guy was scared of a kitten on his foot and the punchline was the death of a cat? I get dark horror element but not funny as it one dumb joke and one poor taste joke. Also bad accents does not make for good humor either, this movie lacks all sense of the word subtlety.

Lena Heady as Angelika and Peter Stormare as Cavaldi

Then we have characters-like plot devices. They give the illusion of that actors having to play people with distinct character traits but no they don’t. The most they have is angry, nerdy, vain and accenty, the seven dwarfs have more in-depth well round characters that these characters.

Monica Bellucci as The Mirror Queen

But you know just because the plot and characters either suck or nonexistent, doesn’t make the technicals bad. They just ok to really bad. The CG work is on par with off-brand Disney knock-offs. The sets are ok but as fake as Dolly Patron’s chest. The costumes are blah, though the Mirror Queen’s costume is laughable, I mean that crown is just so fucking cheesy, I laughed a lot, and I said there was no comedy in this movie.

Matt Damon as Will and Health Ledger as Jacob

The Brothers Grimm had the potential  to be a good movie that used tropes and references to fairy tales but the lack of subtly, humor and all around anything entertaining makes this an unpleasent movie to sit through.

Clue 1 and Clue 2