Talk about "The Brothers Grimm" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
Once upon a time there were two brothers who lived in
Germany in 1812. Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger), were conmen who traveled from town to town with their two accomplices staging ghastly horrors and pretending to vanquish witches and trolls and things of the sort. Unfortunately, however, they were captured by the French army whose general demanded that they travel to the woods and thwart another bunch of tricksters like themselves. When the Grimms arrived in the little town near the forest, they found that the small daughters of the townspeople had been turning up missing when they walked through the forest. Quickly the Grimms find out that this forest is not inhabited by charlatans like themselves, but is actually enchanted. The choice they are left with is to either surrender to the general, and be tortured and killed, or attempt to defeat the forces they've been pretending to defeat all along.
Review
It was definitely nice to finally see a different story in theatres. I expected this to be a compilation of the mildly grotesque stories compiled in the Grimms Fairytales books, but it was a story depicting a fictional adventure that gave ideas as to how the Grimms might have come to writing the stories down. The story was definitely enthralling, though a bit strange and a bit cliche at times.
One person who really shocked and amazed me in this film was Heath Ledger. I spent the duration of it wondering who this fantastic new face was, not realizing that he was the same actor I'd seen in "The Patriot" and "Ten Things I Hate About You." I wasn't too thrilled with his performance in either of those films, but I thought he vastly exceeded what I would have expected of him in "The Brothers Grimm." Matt Damon was alright as Will Grimm, but Ledger really stole the show, his performance shining. Personally I'm not generally a Matt Damon fan, but he wasn't bad in this film, and he played a nice second to Ledger.
The character of Cavaldi (Peter Stormare) was one major downfall of this film. He followed the Grimms everywhere and he was very obviously an attempt at comic relief, but he wasn't funny, and he did nothing more than take away from the film. In my opinion, the film would have been much better if Stormare's part had been cut down to only a few scenes instead of having him follow the Grimms from scene to scene being obnoxious while trying to be funny. The film would have been better off without that attempt at comedy because it wasn't comedic in the least.
Other than Cavaldi and one ridiculous scene involving the gingerbread boy (I don't want to spoil anything, and I don't even want to go into that) the film was quite well made. It was definitely entertaining, and there was action throughout, though it was a bit gory, but then again, so were the original fairy-tales, we have just received the watered-down versions of today as opposed to the originals.
Conclusion
I walked into the theatre not knowing what to expect, or even what the film was about. I think it must have been poorly advertised because I hadn't seen a preview for it, or even a poster anywhere. I didn't know it existed till I logged on to our local movie theatre's website to see what was showing. Intrigued by the title, I headed to the theatre and sat down in one of the scratchy (but at the same time mysteriously sticky) seats and waited for the previews. The previews that were shown with this film were for things like "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and this made me wonder if it was a horror film, or a thriller, and I wasn't sure at all how it was going to work out with Matt Damon as a lead.
At first I was very skeptical of the film. Directly after the mill-witch scene I couldn't decide if it was supposed to be a joke or not. I was amazed at the horrible special effects used with the witch and thought that it must have been a very low-budget film. Fortunately, these befuddlements were quickly cleared up as the story progressed and I learned that the Grimms were conmen.
There were some bits of the tale that weren't really explained, and other parts that I would have liked to see more of, but as a whole I really liked this film a lot. Generally I don't leave a theatre thinking about buying the DVD, or even feeling like I hadn't wasted my time watching something, but with "The Brothers Grimm" I did. I liked most of all the interesting take on the fairytales. They weren't just slapped into the story, and they weren't even really whole fairytales, but pieces of different well-known stories would come into play throughout the film, as if this was what inspired Jacob Grimm to write down the tales as he liked them. There was enough of the different pieces of fairytales to potentially inspire someone experiencing the thing, but not the whole tale that we've all heard since childhood. This film was not redundant.
I would recommend "The Brothers Grimm" to anyone. This is one of the few films I've really enjoyed since I began reviewing movies, and I'd like to see more films like that. It takes a certain amount of willingness to believe what's going on, because it is riddled with enchantment after all, but if you can you will be satisfied with the result. The film was definitely far from perfect, but it was entertaining and fun, and I enjoyed myself more than I have seeing a movie all year.
