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The Brothers Grimm: Not so grim after all

Once upon a time, a movie had a horrible beginning. It looked bad, sounded worse and was very bleak, which went against the tone of the rest of the film. Luckily, the movie had two solid stars and a very good director with a distinct idea of what the film should look like. The movie quickly regained its form and ended up being quite entertaining. The end.

Terry Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm” did not receive a lot of good reviews and after watching the first five minutes I felt that most of the reviews had to be correct. However, Matt Damon (Will) and Heath Ledger (Jake) hoisted the film upon their backs, used their charms and won me over. As did Gilliam’s lovely and haunting vision of an enchanted forest. It may not be a classic that I’d want to own in my DVD library, but it wasn’t “Weekend at Bernie’s II” either.

The plot of the film focuses on a young Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, before they wrote the stories that made them famous. Apparently, before they became authors the two brothers were scam artists in French-occupied Germany in the early part of the 19th century. They would hear of a town that thought they were haunted and they would set up a “ghost-busting” operation to play the heroes and rid the town of evil. A French general captures the pair and threatens to execute them unless they find the culprits behind a string of child abductions in the town of Marbaden. The Grimms think that they must be up against scam artists like themselves but soon find themselves embroiled in a fairy tale like adventure with a wicked queen, curses, spells, gingerbread men and much more.

While the surrounding cast looks the part of 19th century peasants and Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare ham it up perfectly in their scenes as the general and his Italian assassin respectively, the film succeeds because of Damon and Ledger. Damon’s Will is the cocky ladies’ man, who feels he has to be the leader and the protector of Jake, his only remaining family member, while Jake, played beautifully by Ledger, who deserves to be seen in more films, is the dreamer. His belief in magic and the seemingly elusive “happily ever after” makes him a winning hero. The two play off each other very well and could have used more cheeky interplay.

As in many of Gilliam’s films, the cinematography is a star itself. From a forest that seems to shift and come alive at every turn to the spooky use of shadows, Gilliam gives the audience the perfect setting for what he hopes is the ultimate Grimm fairy tale. Unfortunately, Ehren Kruger, who wrote a very suspenseful “The Skeleton Key,” falls a tad short with this tale. The opening scene of a Grimm sibling dying of plague is a serious misstep and the film needed more magic and fun early on. Instead, Gilliam and Kruger appeared to focus on the dark nature that runs throughout many of the Grimm’s stories. After all, in their version of “Cinderella,” the evil stepsisters hack off their toes to fit into the glass slipper. This works fine for older audiences but young children may have to stay away from this for a few more years.

“The Brothers Grimm,” while not great, is a good movie. It takes the look that “Van Helsing” was going for and makes a movie 20 times better than that.

• **