The Brothers Grimm (2005)

The Brothers Grimm is almost Kaufman-esque, in a way, as a story about stories. By extension, then, I suppose it's the Pirates of the Caribbean of Charlie Kaufman stories - it doesn't take itself too seriously. But at the same time, it's a Terry Gilliam flick, which means The Brothers Grimm is superlatively visually stimulating, but coherence is not to be expected.

Fortunately, The Brothers Grimm is to date the most accessible Gilliam movie (excepting the brilliant Monty Python and the Holy Grail) I've seen.

These ain't your momma's Grimm Brothers, that's for sure. As portrayed by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, Will and Jake - not Wilhelm and Jakob - are the 19th century equivalent of Ghostbusters, liberating French-occupied Germany from all manner of witches and demons. We quickly learn that the Grimm enterprise is a sham, as Will & Jake are staging superstitious happenings in order to reap the profits for "defeating" the apparitions. Their fraud is unearthed by the villainous French General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) and his Italian torturer Cavaldi (Peter Stormare, best known as the killer from Fargo, Karl Hungus/Uli Kunkel from The Big Lebowski, and rogue electrician Slippery Pete from "Seinfeld"), who force the brothers Grimm to solve the mystery of the missing girls of Marbaden, a forest town filled with every fairy tale denizen you can imagine.

Coherent? Certainly. Spectacular? Not quite. Fun? If you're into this sort of thing.

The fun in the film comes from two places: the cast and the script. The cast isn't quite impeccable, since they never manage to steal the show from the vivacious visuals Gilliam provides, but they all do a nice job of creating memorable if cartoonish characters. Damon and Ledger (both of whom can do no wrong in my book, though I would have liked to see the original choice for Will - Johnny Depp) are the stars, and they've got a real chemistry as brothers that suggests a long history between the two. Ladies man Will often clashes with bookish Jake, and both Damon and Ledger do a solid job of instantly creating a plausible characterization and sticking to it throughout. Ledger's accent, though, is a touch distracting, an interesting combination of Sean Connery and The Joker circa The Dark Knight. Pryce and Stormare are far grosser caricatures, underspeaking a typically British xenophobia of all things continental; Pryce is a knockout as always, and Stormare brings his conventional slimy foreigner aura to his role. Lena Headey (the queen from 300) is negligible as guide/love interest, but Monica Bellucci - as the eerie Mirror Queen - carries well the seductive cruelty of her witchy character.

The script, tangled though it is in places (and admittedly muddy in others) is fun because it's filled to the brim with references, homages, and nods of the head toward the more commonly known career of the Grimm brothers and the fairy tale canon on the whole. Keep your eyes peeled for Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, and even The Gingerbread Man (look out, cookie from Shrek). Of course, knowing the identity of the little girl wearing a red hood in the forest isn't essential, but it helps make the later joke - in which Jake jots down in his journal "Little Red Riding Cape" - more entertaining.

I admitted the film is muddy, and it's classic Gilliam mud. After knocking out essential exposition within twenty minutes, the film dispenses with most claims to a plot and instead focuses on the Grimm dynamic and the eye-popping spectacle sequences (like moving trees, cobwebbed horses, and mud with a face). Consequently, the movie gets a little difficult to follow, especially when the narrative jumps quickly from scene to scene with little but imagination to fill in the gaps. What saves The Brothers Grimm from being another Gilliam headscratcher is its existence in a fantasy world where normal rules don't apply. I often ask of a Gilliam film, "How could this happen? What exactly is happening?" Here, the film makes up its own rules as it goes along, answering the question by saying, "X happens because that's the way fairy tales work."

The Brothers Grimm might not leave viewers happily ever after, but you'll at least turn the page with a smile on your face.

The Brothers Grimm is inscribed with a rating of "PG-13 for violence, frightening sequences and brief suggestive material." Violence and terror come on the whole from spooky creatures and foreboding forest environs, which some younger viewers might find more eerie than entertaining. As for suggestive material, Will is implied numerous times to be quite the ladies' man, but this is subtle and not prevalent.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Has a Terry Gilliam movie ever made complete sense to anyone? Probably not, but I think we can all agree they're at least intriguing when it comes to visual spectacle.

Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of the famous novel by Hunter S. Thompson is an optical tour de force, as close to an actual acid trip as one could come without skirting legal boundaries. Johnny Depp is Raoul Duke, Thompson's fictitious alter ego, assigned to cover motorcycle races and "dangers of drugs" conventions in Las Vegas. Duke brings along his questionable lawyer Dr. Gonzo (an off-the-wall Benicio del Toro) and a suitcase full of every controlled (and potentially uncontrollable) substance known to man. The results are, shall we say, mind-blowing.

Both Depp and del Toro turn in career-capping performances, among the best in both their respective canons. Depp is spot on as Raoul Duke, mastering every one of the little quirks - the walk, the talk, the hair - that make Hunter S. Thompson such an identifiable figure in American culture. And del Toro is so far out there that you'll wonder how much of that is acting and how much of that is "method" acting; the fact that Dr. Gonzo is often brandishing a deadly weapon doesn't hurt. There are fun cameos from Cameron Diaz, Gary Busey, Christina Ricci, Penn Jillette, and Gregory Itzin along the way, but the show belongs to Depp and del Toro all the way.

Of course, the film has a third star - the eye-popping visuals. Since much of the film finds its two protagonists on one bender or another, the look of the film is extremely important to capturing this mood. Fortunately, trippy and surreal imagery has never been a particular weakness of Gilliam's; between the brutally slanted camera angles, the dramatically off-kilter lighting, and the oddball props and lizard costumes that appear at random, the film is as unsettling as it is riveting.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then, is a little like Barton Fink - it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but it's gripping in a way that it shouldn't be. A film this nonsensical, this non sequitur, this irrational, shouldn't be as interesting as Gilliam and his acting crew make it. It's incoherent, sure, but it's a lot of fun! Nothing happens for vast periods of time, and while this complete lack of plot, exposition, or even substance can be a little irritating, it's nonetheless something from which you can't tear yourself away.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got the gift of an "R for pervasive extreme drug use and related bizarre behavior, strong language, and brief nudity" from the MPAA. Drugs and their side-effects are in every scene of the movie, as is pretty harsh language. I don't remember nudity at all.