Submitted by Heather on Sat, 09/10/2005 - 18:28
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Dave and I just got back from seeing Brothers Grimm and I have to say I was thoroughly entertained. It's mostly light fluff, with none of the biting social commentary of Gilliam movies like Brazil or 12 Monkeys, but for all that it was well worth going to see.
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Brothers Grimm
WHAT!!!!!!
OMG i cant believe what I am reading. The movie was complete and utter garbage! Like it was up there with Catwoman in terms of horribleness! No joke, throughout the entire movie, i was making comments and the people around me were laughing more at MY jokes than the movie!
Brothers Grimm
To be honest, it wasn't Gillima's best work. Time Bandits was better. But this movie had some good things in it. I liked how it dealt with the difference between fantasy and reality and the "horrible-factor" was a nice touch.
There was room for improvement in the acting by Mssrs Damon and Ledger. I found both of their performances to be less than fulfilling. But, they were in-character throughout the film and although their development was ham-handed in the script I felt like it was handled in a way that didn't let the rest of the story lag too badly.
So having said what I like and didn't like, Shaun. What was it about the movie you didn't like?
Brothers Grimm
Wow ok I can go on an on but I think ill stick to a few key points.
SPOILER WARNING!!!
1- How about the fact that you could literally shuffle the scenes and put them in a different order and you wouldnt even notice.
2-The ginger bread man....nuff said.
3- Matt and Heath had NO chemistry together and they didnt seem like brothers and you never felt that bond
4- Spider Horse eatting the girl...what the hell.
5- The Italian guy becoming good (not to mention that you could never understand what he was saying. Like I swear at one point he just said "MANGO" for no reason.
6- Matt Damon survivng everything that happened to him at the end. (including being stabbed twice and falling from a HUGE tower) and not only survivng but being perfectly fine!
7- The french general who wasnt funny at all (eating the dead cat part...was I supposed to laugh)
I could go on and on, but I think I will end with my favourite quote and the thing that made me laugh the most (well the Gingerbread was a close 2nd)
8- "I remember this story from my youth. You must give her a kiss of true love....but beware, if it is not true love than it will be a kiss of DEATH!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
so there you go lol, just a brief list of why!
Brothers Grimm
Agreed I felt like the CGI was just there to distract me from the horrible move I was watching, and to a degree it did but I still felt ripped off and I downloaded the movie for free. Oh well you cant expect hollywood to actully make more than 1 or 2 decent movies a year so you gotta take the good with the bad.
Brothers Grimm
I definitely get the feeling that you were expecting something more traditionally Gilliam out of this movie, Shaun. I went into it knowing that the production company had got in his way to the point where he just gave up trying to argue with them. So yes, it's suffered from that tremendously.
But I thought Heath Ledger's performance was spot on as Jake - Matt Damon considerably less so (especially when he kept lapsing back to an American accent) - and as much as you hated the Italian, I loved him. He was so over the top that you had to laugh at him. Maybe it's because I grew up with Monty Python that I have a handle on Gilliam's style of humour... dunno.
This was not a movie to be taken seriously. I went into it expecting light fluff, and that's exactly what it was. I never claimed it was great cinema, merely that it was highly entertaining. And it was.
I have sat through movies in the past that I wish I hadn't, and there are a handful of movies that I've only ever seen partway through because I just couldn't take them anymore. But Brothers Grimm never gave me that feeling. I was entranced with it from the first, and stayed that way for the whole two hours.
Was it silly? Yep. Did bits of it make no sense? Yeah, of course... but that's what you should have expected, knowing both the director and the run-ins he had with the Brothers Weinstein. I'm thinking that you hated it merely because you expected more of it than it delivered. This was never going to be another 12 Monkeys, that was for sure.
Brothers Grimm
I think that everyone was expecting a lot more from it because it was (fanfare) TERRY GILLIAM. The man deals in the absurd, so the bits that don't make sense actually made more sense to me, which I attribute to being a Pythonphile. To be honest, yeah, the script wasn't great, and considering it wasn't written by Gilliam himself (you can tell because all the characters were still alive at the end...), I think it made the best of a silly script and okay performances. And I have to agree about the Italian guy. He wasn't all that good. I wish Robin Williams hadn't passed on that particular part, because he would have made it seem less irritating and more Peter sellers-ish. But I digress. All in all, though, it was a weird movie that I could turn my brain off to, and that made it good for me.