'The Brothers Grimm': Both too grim and not Grimm enough

"The Brothers Grimm" is not your father's fairy tales. Or your children's.

And that's part of the problem.

Terry Gilliam has created a movie that's occasionally stunning but more often confused. It's not really a family film and it's not really a film for Gilliam's fans, since he's not at his best. And it's certainly not the action extravaganza that's being advertised on television.

Dimension Films 'The Brothers Grimm' C The verdict: Terry Gilliam's fractured fairy tale has some amazing moments but a muddled plot. Director: Terry Gilliam Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci, Jonathan Pryce, Lena Headey Release date: August 26, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for violence, frightening sequences and brief suggestive material. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "The Brothers Grimm"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Nor is it a chronicle of the actual 19th-century Grimm brothers, who collected and recorded most of the fairy tales we know today. In Gilliam's version, Will (Matt Damon) is the smoothie, the ladies man, and Jake (Heath Ledger) is the distracted dreamer who actually does sell the family cow for a can of "magic" beans.

Both are two-bit con men who travel from village to village in French-occupied Germany, exorcising — for a fee — ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. Only, this brother act has much more to do with the theatrical than the supernatural. Much like the crew in Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners" — with a bit of "Ghostbusters" wisecracking thrown in — Will and Jake basically get rid of a creature they created. Sort of the misuses of enchantment.

But when something wicked comes to the hamlet of Marbaden, the brothers are forced by the French governor (Jonathan Pryce) to rout the monster. Girls have gone missing. Like that nice kid in the red riding hood and Hans' sweet sister, Greta, while searching for a fabled gingerbread house. The answer lies in the nearby gloomy, slithering, Jabberwocky forest, where, as someone says, "Don't trust the trees."

Into the woods, indeed.

Like Stephen Sondheim's musical, Gilliam laces his plot with fairy tale references. A bit of Rapunzel here, a touch of Snow White's evil queen there.

Alas, glimpses are all we get as Gilliam plunges forward with Ehren Kruger's ("The Skeleton Key") overbusy and incoherent plot. There may not be any room for Cinderella, but there is for an oafish soldier, operatically overacted by the usually good Peter Stormare. And a 19th-century feminist huntress (Lena Headey). And some loopy bits of Monty Python-style humor that don't really work within the film's context. Only Monica Bellucci, as the evil Mirror Queen, has any impact. Damon and Ledger certainly don't.

As you'd expect, the filmmaker's phantasmagorical imagination whips up a handful of astonishing moments — as astonishing as anything you'll see on film this year. A demon horse gobbles up a little girl whole. A tar-baby grotesque emerges from a well and becomes a gingerbread man. And when an old hag straight out of Central Casting says, "We always knew the forest was enchanted, but till now, it never turned against us," a slight shiver runs up your spine.

In a sense, much like Hansel and Gretel and that gingerbread house of horrors, Gilliam has bitten off more than he can chew. We're left with a fractured fairy tale that's both too grim and not Grimm enough.