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'Brothers Grimm' is more tangled than Teutonic Woods
By CRAIG OUTHIER
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Sadly, Terry Gilliam's uncompromising, studio-aversive genius comes with a price: His films, produced independently, are often sustained by crude investment coalitions that are as fractious and collapse-prone as an Italian democracy. The implosion can be spectacular, as it was in “Lost in La Mancha,” the 2002 documentary that chronicled the former Monty Python writer/animator's abortive attempt to bring “Don Quixote” to the big screen.

With that unpleasantness in mind, we greet Gilliam's fairy-tale thriller “The Brothers Grimm” with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Relief, because it's good to see Gilliam's sensibilities intact, his weirdness unbowed. Disappointment, because this is probably one of the “Brazil” filmmaker's lesser efforts — a cloudy, underfelt 19th-century fantasy yarn that dervishly spins itself in circles in lieu of feats more meaningful. This time, Gilliam's storytelling is even more convoluted than his bookkeeping. (For the record, Miramax was the primary production partner on this particular venture.)

Gilliam (“12 Monkeys”) and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (“The Ring”) start with an ingenious premise: What if the Brothers Grimm, before scaring the sauerkraut out of German schoolchildren with their famously macabre fairy tales, worked as 19th-century con men, exploiting the very superstitions and paranormal horrors they would one day write about?

Wilhelm Grimm (Matt Damon), the older and more practical of the two, still resents bookish, impressionable Jacob (Heath Ledger) for getting swindled with “magic” beans as a child, a costly mistake that led to the death of their sickly little sister and, presumably, informed their present choice of career.

Whilst traveling from town to town, banishing witches and other imaginary specters, the Grimms are detained by Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce), a ruthless French general with the occupying Napoleonic army. It seems that a small but strategically pivotal Bavarian town is being terrorized by a rash of real-life child abductions. Delatombe is no fool. He knows the Grimms are flim-flam men and suspects that the villain behind the kidnappings is, too. Hoping to fight fire with fire, Delatombe dispatches the Grimms to settle down the spooked townsfolk and unravel the mystery.

On paper, “The Brothers Grimm” appears to be the ideal Gilliam contraption, mingling mysticism and theater with a dash of the historical burlesque that he so loves (“The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” “Time Bandits”). And there are some ticklish moments, particularly when Wilhelm and Jacob find their skepticism swept aside by magical encounters with big, bad wolves, gingerbread men and other colorful mainstays of the Grimm canon.

So why does “The Brothers Grimm” fail to cast a spell? For starters, Gilliam's sense of controlled chaos is a bit less controlled than usual, especially toward the finale, when the Grimms engage the super-vain Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci from “Matrix Revolutions”) in a protracted, double-overtime struggle that resolves itself in the tritest way possible.

In the scrum, Gilliam seems to lose sight of the story's essential message of brotherly love and forgiveness, and neither Damon (“The Bourne Supremacy”) nor Ledger (“Lords of Dogtown”) puts in the extra gravitas to bring it back.

Gilliam movies typically make ideal refuges for over-the-top performances, but that truism is put to the test by actor Peter Stormare (“Fargo”), playing Delatombe's sadistic Italian lieutenant. Barking and growling like Roberto Benigni on horse steroids, Stormare chews up Gilliam's scenery so thoroughly, you may not want to look at it.

‘The Brothers Grimm'
Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Stormare
Rating: PG-13 (violence, frightening sequences and brief suggestive material)
Running time: 118 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday in
Valley theaters
GRADE: C