I saw the trailer and some posters at our local theater a few months back, and kinda wanted to see it. I like most of Terry Gilliam’s other films (especially “Twelve Monkeys” and “Brazil”), but this was gone in a flash. Was it THAT bad? Did it really bomb THAT fast? Will the studios EVER hire Gilliam again?
If you saw it, a bit of plot description and what you liked - and didn’t - would be appreciated.
I thought it was pretty mediocre. There were a few threads about it when it came out.
I was extremely disappointed, even though the concept was interesting and the trailers made it look cool. I love a lot of Gilliam’s other movies, but *Brothers Grimm * was just… boring. It was very slowly-paced, and it seemed like they had some great ideas but couldn’t put them together into a cohesive whole. I checked my watch more than once, which I never do at movies. In fact, I don’t see many movies in the theater anymore, so this was actually one of my least-favorites of the year so far.
It was pretty bad. There’s a lot of stock characters, but none are used very well, and one character changes from archrival to all-around great guy there at the end for no real reason. Things happen, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any flow. I left scratching my head, thinking, “well, that was a waste of money.” See it at the cheap seats, or include it as your free rental (if your local video store does that sort of thing; mine does).
Brief plot theme- Bros G are professional spook-busters/con-artists making a living from ridding villages of their local haunts. But the Military Governor orders them to solve a real haunting, which uses a lot of “fairy tale” symbols, in which a witch-Queen is making the local preteen girls vanish.
Interesting, but quite convoluted. When come back, bring coherence.
Worth a cheap showing.
The second half-after they get to where they’re going-was cool, and there were some creepy images, but that’s it.
I actually rather liked it, though more for the amazing set design and images than for the (very hard to follow) plot. Normally I’m not wowed by that kind of stuff (I hated the Matrix sequels), but this one struck a chord, for some reason. Maybe since it’s the first Terry Gilliam movie I’ve seen (excepting “Lost in La Mancha,” if that counts at all).
I enjoyed The Brothers Grimm; it wasn’t great, but it was worth the matinee price I paid.
As to it bombing- it did bomb, but that was somewhat expected. Gilliam wasn’t happy with how it came out, the release date was pushed back, and I think it was dumped in August because of the cleaning out of Miramax (just like The Great Raid, A Sound of Thunder, and some other movies were recently unceremoniously dumped into theaters).
Gilliam will always get work, but I don’t know if he would get hired by studios again, but I also don’t think he’d ever want to work for studios again- after the trouble he had with **The Brothers Grimm ** and Lost in La Mancha.
As to it disappearing, I don’t know if how it was in your theaters, but I think it was here for two or three weeks- not great but not the quickest I’ve seen a movie come and go. It did open August 26 in the US, so I imagine that the only places it’s playing at now would be discount theaters.
Just a point of note: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (the aborted making of which is documented in Lost In La Mancha was funded entirely by European sources, not a Hollywood studio like Paramount, MGM, or Miramax/Disney. His problems with Don Quixote were more a collection of unfortunately circumstances (flash flooding of a film set, a a falling down sound studio, his lead actor becoming ill during filming, et cetera) than any problems with investors; in fact, from a creative freedom point of view Don Quixote might have been the most liberated movie-making experience Gilliam ever enjoyed. While it’s true that he had numerous clashes with the Weinstein Brothers at Miramax over casting and artistic direction, the other film he has coming out this year, Tideland, over which he reputedly had complete creative control, has been universally panned by critics at its festival showing in Toronto.
Gilliam has done some brilliant work, and often when at odds with the studio and under challenging situations–Brazil stands as a masterwork of modern cinema and is even more impressive given the conditions under which it was filmed–but he’s also directed some utter junk like Jabberwocky, and indifferent misfires The Fisher King. Even his better stuff is often uneven; The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is about 2/3 of a great film swimming through a sea of quicksand. 12 Monkeys is probably his most expertly made film, and while it’s a good one, it misses brilliance by a small but definite margin.
Gilliam has the sensibility of a (good) rock video director, and his single best film is the short feature that accompanies Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, The Crimson Permanent Assurance. His feature length films all contain moments of genius but are pretty hit-or-miss for consistancy, one of many traits he shares with the late Orson Welles.
The other thing to note is that films–even very good films–don’t remain in theaters very long. When Raiders of the Lost Ark first came out, it ran solidly for more than a year, and then was almost instantly re-released for another full-market run. This was back in 1981, of course, and video was a vary narrow market segment. Today, studios and investors make as much or likely more from video distribution as primary release, and indeed, cinema release is increasingly being seen as more of a way of marketing a film than the primary profit on it. (This is the only way most small independent “art house” distributors make any profit on their films after marketing and distirbution costs.) So a film that is hemmoraging in theaters–and costing the increasingly unprofitable cinema chains lost revenue–will get yanked quickly and dumped to the DVD market in hopes that people who wouldn’t go see it in theaters will rent or buy it. There is also a sizable portion of the population that either can’t or won’t go see a film in theaters; parents with small children, viewers who won’t put up with increasingly rude and distracting behavior in cinemas, young kids who want to view a film over and over, and people who just don’t live within ready distance of a decent cinema. So as a result, distributors push movies in and out of theaters quickly and onto DVD shelves as fast as possible, especially films that aren’t “performing,” i.e. have a huge opening weekend release. There is no time for a studio film to develop a word-of-mouth following (although this is still a consideration for smaller independent films with smaller expectations and reduced marketing costs).
But The Brothers Grimm, despite the promise of the setup, was a mediocre film at best. Too bad…I was really looking forward to a good Gilliam film. I guess I’ll have to spring for the US$45 Brazil DVD instead. 
Stranger