Cheap The Brothers Grimm (DVD) (Matt Damon, Heath Ledger) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Brothers Grimm

A promising idea that results in a disappointing mess.
This movie has a lot of things going for it: an interesting premise (hey, I love stories that play around with fairy tale motifs), very well-done visuals, some funny, clever dialog... And yet, it really just completely fails to work. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but I think the problem is that it's simply trying to be too many things at once. It doesn't know whether it's a subtle comedy, a broad over-the-top comedy, a moving drama about brotherly love or a lush, sense-of-wonder-inducing fantasy. As a result, I felt weirdly off-balance through the whole movie, never reacting to any individual moment quite the way it wanted me to. When it wanted me to be moved, my head was still in a comedy space, and when it wanted me to laugh, I was taking it too seriously. I almost wonder if this might have been a lot more successful if it had had much lower production values... There's dialog and story elements here that -- unsurprisingly, given that it comes from Terry Gilliam -- would have worked beautifully in a Monty Python movie, but there's something about the whole visual language of the film that leads you to approach it very, very differently from the way you'd approach a Python flick. Or at least, that's how it was for me. The result was like some kind of massive exercise in psychic dissonance. And not in a cool way.

A Great Romp for Fairy Tale Lovers...
Despite the low opinions of most in regards to this film, I still thought it was a terrific romp through some of my favorite fairy-tales. <
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>Fairy tales have been passed down through generations as entertaining stories full of traditional morals and lessons used to instruct children (and often adults) on such things as good behavior, how to treat others, and general life lessons that everyone should learn. <
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>Fairy-tales have been moderated over the years to make them more kid friendly (for example, in the original translation of "Sleeping Beauty", the Prince actually has sex with the Princess he finds sleeping in a tower, and then leaves before she wakes up. Obviously, this ending was changed to where, instead, the Prince awakens the beautiful Princess with the kiss of true love (something that occurrs in other tales, such as Snow White). <
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>"The Brothers Grimm" takes an applaudable approach to revamping some of our best-known fairy tales into an entertainingly NEW story. By fusing together stories such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and many more, "The Brothers Grimm" presents new elements and insights into these stories that are so steeped in tradition. I challenge you to watch the whole film and try to pick out the details from each fairy-tale. Try to catch the inside jokes, and little *winks* the film gives to so many different tales. <
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>The DVD version contains many fun features, including deleted and extended scenes. One of these deleted scenes, in which the two brothers and their "lady fair" are attempting to escape the attack of an enchanted tree, is one of the most *expensive* scenes to ever have *not* made it into the movie! <
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>I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and it reminded me of my deep love of fairy tales. If for nothing else, at least credit the film with "thinking outside the box" when it comes to translating traditional fairy-tales on film. This wasn't a simple retelling of a fairy tale, as can be found in abundance on DVD...it really tried to poke fun at itself, and present a *new* story mixed in with so much tradition. <
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>It also doesn't hurt to have such a star cast, with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger creating a comical "odd-couple" duo. I hope to see more of these kinds of film in the future.