Friday, August 26, 2005

Friday Movie Review: The Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm - Review - Movies - New York Times

"Mr. Damon and Mr. Ledger shout their lines and run circles around each other as they try to advance the plot. Like Colin Farrell in "Alexander," Mr. Damon is also forced to struggle with a most disenchanting handicap, namely a hairdo (or wig) that in combination with his sideburns and frock coat make him look ready for a Paul Revere and the Raiders tribute band. The director, meanwhile, ignores the forest while he tends to his magical trees, which look about as scary as breadsticks compared with the pugnacious perennials in "The Wizard of Oz." Mr. Gilliam seems familiar with fairy tales (as the resident villain, Monica Bellucci asks who's the fairest one of all), but expresses no interest in their possibilities. Here, there is absolutely nothing - not dread, not desire, not mystery - under the little red hood."

Okay, so that's the stuffy Times...what do others say...

"If only summer movies were, as a matter of course, this inventive, this modest, this interested -- even derisively -- in cultural legacies, this faithful to concept and setting."-- Michael Atkinson, VILLAGE VOICE

"The Brothers Grimm is a work of limitless invention, but it is invention without pattern, chasing itself around the screen without finding a plot."-- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

"A fractured fairy tale that's both too grim and not Grimm enough."-- Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

"A pinata of visual effects that Gilliam keeps smashing, with diminishing returns."-- Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"Hugely ambitious but often failing to live up to those ambitions."-- Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"Deeply lost in the woods."-- Robert Koehler, VARIETY

"Maybe not terrible so much as terminally silly."-- Michael O'Sullivan, WASHINGTON POST

"There is magic in The Brothers Grimm but it's hard to locate amid all the...'stuff,' I believe is the technical phrase."-- Michael Phillips, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

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