"The Brothers Grimm" imagines Will and Jacob Grimm (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger) to be a sort of 18th century Scooby gang, the twist being that the brothers orchestrate the hauntings which they later solve for an exorbitant fee. The con has apparently served them well until they are unmasked by two utterly annoying characters: an Italian torturer named Cavaldi (Peter Stormare, nearly sinking the film with criminal overacting) and a French general (Jonathan Pryce, adopting a newly absurd accent in every scene). The plot, such as it is, revolves around the brothers' attempt to break a genuine spell cast by the Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci).
The magic spells inherent in the plot allow director Terry Gilliam to plaster the screen with his vast imagination (a horse that spits spider webs, walking birch trees). Mr. Gilliam should have used that energy to conjure up a story - or even one character - worth caring about. The actors can't even agree on a common accent. The film sputters to life with the addition of Lena Headey who appears as a sort of common love interest for the brothers. While she grabs hold of each of her scenes, the film never knows quite what to do with her.
Surprisingly, the script is credited to Ehren Kruger, a writer usually associated with Hollywood horror claptrap such as "The Ring" and "The Skeleton Key". While I'm sure there are some remnants of Mr. Kruger's original story to be found within "Grimm", I imagine Mr. Gilliam has given the script a stout re-tooling. There are a lot of fun elements at work in the film. There are clever references to Grimm classics such as "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Hansel and Gretel" (here knows as Hans and Greta), but they never amount to anything more than winks to the audience.
Like George Lucas endlessly futzing with his "Star Wars" films, Mr. Gilliam never seems to be satisfied with the contents of a scene; it's not enough, for example, for a scene to be about the late night kidnapping of a young child - the brothers must also be dressed as maids scrubbing the floors for no apparent reason. This is the sort of non sequitur that keeps "The Brothers Grimm" feeling like more of a special effects reel than a finished film. And, oddly, the special effects themselves are startlingly underbaked and cheesy.
I used to think that Terry Gilliam didn't want to be accessible to the average filmgoer. That may have been true in his heyday, when he churned out "Brazil", "Time Bandits" or the underappreciated "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" - all films which defied genre and linear order. It's possible in his later years the director yearns for acceptance by the common man, or at least a bona fide Hollywood moneymaker. "The Brothers Grimm" is not it. But for a director who loves tangents, it's a step in the right direction.
