Brothers Grimm - Bastardizing fairy tales since 2005

Movie Title : Brothers Grimm
Movie Tagline : Eliminating Evil since 1812
Actors : Matt Damon as Wihelm Grimm
Heath Ledger as Jacob Grimm

Merry Xmas to everyone. What better time than for me to start dissing the worst movie (based on fairy tales) in cinematic history? When I watched it a week ago on DVD, I discovered midway that my forehead is bleeding. I then realised that I have been headbutting the TV screen subconsciously in an effort to kill Matt Damon and his friends.

Watching Brothers Grimm is a "grim"endurance test. It is as if the director had made it a personal vendatta against all fairy tales and made it his holy grail to bastardize as many fairy tales written by the original German brothers as possible.

For those unaware of the real Brothers Grimm, the German brothers are well known for publishing collection of German fairy tales since 1812. Many of you would know these famous fairy tales:

a. Little Red Riding Hood h. Pipe Piper
b. Cinderella i. Gingerbread man
c. Frog Prince
d. Hansel and Gretel
e. Sleeping Beauty
f. Snow White
g. Rapunzel

and many many more.

The director Terry Gilliam managed to bastardize every single fairy tale the Grimm Brothers ever published by trying to squeeze them into a two hour movie. Many of these fairy tales characters appeared for a couple of minutes, say hi to the audience and then was captured by silly trees or some big bad wolf (ho ho, guess which fairy tale he came from) and then placed in some boxes. If you don't believe me, check out my summary of the movie and ask yourself how bad it is:

Grimm Brothers were asked to investigate a disappearnce of children. Red Riding Hood was picking flowers (not delivering food to her Grandma) when she was captured by trees. Hansel and Greta started looking for RRH but their breadcrumbs were eaten by pigeons. They were then captured by Big Bad Wolf who was subcontracted by the evil queen Rapunzel who combed her long hair on a big tower. Meanwhile a mud creature took over a village boy and mould him into a Gingerbread man (any connection with story ends here). Grimm Brothers found the tower, said "Mirror Mirror on the wall", defeated evil Rapunzel, kissed their sleeping beauty who was napping in a coffin so as to wake her. Somewhere along the way, they also have to kiss a puzzled frog to get out of the forest.

WHAT. THE. HELL. IS. GOING. ON.

The magnitude of irrelevance is staggering. The number of fairy tales the director tried to squeeze into the movie caused the show to look like a year end sale at Robinson : cluttered, disorganised and you just wanted to hit someone who took away the only good shirt on sale. It is an absolute mess and to make things worse, the director (in his desperation knowing that he had lost creative control of the movie direction) threw in werewolves, napolenic french general, psychotic (and irritating) mercenary and some cannons to create explosions. Midway through, you find yourself asking whether you bought a cheap porn movie by mistake and whether the Gingerbread man might start humping Rapunzel. Certainly, the drop dead Monica Belluci as Rapunzel (she is the awesomely babelicious Italian from Matrix Reloaded) is the only reason why anyone might even watch the show although be warned that she only appeared for a couple of minutes and spent the whole time combing her hair looking disinterested.

The actors also didn't appear to be interested in acting. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger looked like they don't give an arse about this flop and added in a love angle on their own. The audience (and I think even the director himself) was surprised at the end of the movie when it was revealed that the Grimm Brothers loved Angelika (a butt ugly huntress which played no discernible role in the movie except running everywhere screaming "Sasha! Sasha!"). By then the movie has ended and the audience has either fallen asleep or has fled next door to watch the Bollywood movie "Bride and Prejudice" which by the way is another monumental bad decision (ha ha).

Don't get me wrong - I am all for telling fairy tales the way it should be. Take Little Red Riding Hood for example. Does anyone else think that the story is stupid and a little . . . kinky? A wolf that liked to cross dress into a old woman? A girl who is bloody shortsighted and can't tell her grandman from a wolf in woman's clothings? Ooh "Grandmother, what big eyes you have!” “The better to see you with, my child,” says the wolf. “Grandmother, what big teeth you have!” remarks the girl. “The better to eat you with!” replies the wolf. Is this dumb or what? Someone eat the stupid girl already.

By the way, I read that the original ending of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale was that the wolf ended up as the victor and there was no happy ending i.e .evil wins. The wolf basically tricked little red riding hood into devulging the location of her grandma's house, then ate the grandma and the girl. The end. Ha Ha. According to the original story teller, Charles Perrault in 1697, the moral of the story was to warn young girls not to trust strangers even though they appeared gentle and could sweet talk. Now that is a good moral to a fairy tale. It is a pity that Grimm Brothers thought that the ending was too unpopular and changed it to a more palatable 'happy ending" with a passing woodsman killing the wolf and saving Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandman. Pussy.

Moral of this post : Don't watch this movie. There is no happy ending, trust me. It is better to be turned into a frog, molded into a gingerbread man, worked for seven dwarfs and delivered cookies to your grandma than to watch this disaster piece.