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The Brothers Grimm
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Produced by	Jonathan Gordon Chris McGurk
Written by	Ehren Kruger
Starring	Matt Damon Heath Ledger Jonathan Pryce Lena Headey Peter Stormare Monica Bellucci
Cinematography	Newton Thomas Sigel Nicola Pecorini
Distributed by	- USA - Dimension Films - non-USA - Summit Entertainment
Release date(s)	August 26, 2005
Running time	118 min.
Language	English
Budget	$80,000,000
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IMDb profile

The Brothers Grimm is a 2005 feature film directed by Terry Gilliam.

This film was supposed to be released in November 2004 in theaters, but it was delayed, with the new release date being August 26, 2005. The film was in the competition at the Venice Film Festival 2005.

Tagline: Eliminating Evil Since 1812.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Delayed? 4 DVD release 5 Folklore References 6 External links

The film starts at the end of the 18th century and begins with a scene of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm as children. Their sister is dying and Jacob has been sent to sell the cow in order to have money for a doctor. However, when Jacob returns, he innocently explains that he has traded the cow for "magic" beans. Will is furious with Jacob, and it is implied that their sister died as a result of his mistake.

The story jumps ahead fifteen years (into the early 19th century) with Will and Jake riding into a town in "French occupied Germany," to rid the town of a witch's ghost. However, after killing the "ghost," it is revealed that the Brothers Grimm are actually con artists, setting up fake demons and monsters to trick gullible townspeople.

Afterwards, as they are celebrating at an inn, Cavaldi, an Italian torturer, captures them and takes them to the French General, Delatombe. Delatombe forces them to solve a mystery: the girls of the small village of Marbaden are going missing. The Brothers are charged with finding out who is responsible, under the assumption that it is the work of con artists like themselves. However, they soon discover that it is in fact the work of a real supernatural force: the beautiful yet horribly dangerous Mirror Queen who is stealing young girls for their youth.

Long ago, the Queen tormented the villagers' ancestors to possess their magic, including a spell for eternal life. Only a year later, her kingdom was destroyed by the plague. She built a high tower to avoid it, as her husband and everyone below her perished--unfortunately, she did not understand that plague was carried by wind. She was extraordinarily vain and soon began to rot away as she decayed over the years. Her spell granted her immortal life, but not the youth and beauty to go along with it. Her youthful appearance now only exists in her mirror, the source of her life, as an illusion and nothing more.

The queen is working an enchantment to regain her beauty with the aid of her shape-shifting huntsman with a magic ax (which can operate like a boomerang), crow familiars, and various creatures in the forest. She needs to drink the blood of twelve young women. The Brothers Grimm, with the help of Angelika, a knowing huntress from the village, and Cavaldi, must stop her.

The woodsman turns out to be Angelika's father, who was saved by the Queen from a frozen death and pierced in the heart with a spike or thorn which keeps him under her spell. Eventually, the Brothers gain entrance to the Queen's tower but the spell to return her youth is nearly complete because Angelika has become the twelfth victim.

The Brothers Grimm attack the Queen but she turns their weapons on each other and Will is stabbed. The Queen decides to revive the fallen Grimm and make him her new "prince" by taking the thorn from the woodsman's heart and embedding it in Will's. Jake finally manages to shatter the enchanted mirror inside the tower, causing the Queen to shatter as well. Jake awakens Angelika and everyone else who had been enchanted by giving her the kiss of true love. With the menace gone and their daughters returned to them, the villagers of Marbaden celebrate and give their heart-felt thanks to the Brothers Grimm, who have decided to pursue a new vocation. At this point, the words "And they all lived happily ever after..." appear on screen. However, a crow flies over this cheerful scene with a surviving fragment of the Mirror Queen in its beak and the message on screen changes to "...well maybe not".

Actor	Role
Matt Damon	Will (Wilhelm) Grimm
Heath Ledger	Jake (Jakob) Grimm
Peter Stormare	Mercurio Cavaldi
Lena Headey	Angelika
Jonathan Pryce	General Vavarin Delatombe
Monica Bellucci	The Mirror Queen
Laura Greenwood	Sasha

Despite initial fears by some critics and film fans (based on the fact that the release date was rescheduled several times), The Brothers Grimm was released August 26, 2005 after final arrangements made by the Weinstein brothers and the Walt Disney Company concerning how to divide the catalog of Miramax films currently in production. MGM and Miramax's Dimension Films produced the film, MGM has international rights and Dimension/Miramax has US distribution rights. MGM backed out of its deal to co-distribute in the US, which also contributed to the delay in its release.

Dreams and Nightmares: The Brothers Grimm and other Cautionary Tales of Hollywood by Bob McCabe was released on November 7, 2005 by HarperCollins, documenting the challenges and problems that Gilliam and his crew faced while making the movie.

In an audio commentary on the DVD, Gilliam forthrightly says he did not think much of The Brothers Grimm script but decided to direct it because he had no projects of his own going on at the time. In interviews included on the DVD edition of Tideland Gilliam says agreeing to direct The Brothers Grimm helped him to line up financing for Tideland. The latter film was made during a break in production on The Brothers Grimm.

The DVD version of The Brothers Grimm was released on December 20, 2005. Special features included deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and commentary from Gilliam.

• An old woman walks up to Cavaldi and holds an apple, a reference to Snow White.

• A frog is "kissed," in reference to The Frog Prince.

• While drunk, Jakob tells a story about a time they needed to guess the name of an imp, like in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

• There are 12 girls/princesses on the crypts that encircle the tower, the number is a reference to The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

• A ring is thrown into water, and then the water is turned to ice, like a scene from the film Legend.

• A mud creature in the film mimics the American folklore character of the Tar Baby.

• The mud creature also becomes a flat gingerbread man shaped character which is in concordance with the folktale and child's story of "The Gingerbread Man"

• The Queen lives in a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor door, and only one room and one window, a reference to Rapunzel.

• When the woodsman puts one of the girls in the crypt he puts a pair of glass slippers on a her feet and pricks her finger, possible references to Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, respectively.

• At the end, Angelika is awakened by a kiss of true love, another reference to Sleeping Beauty.

• At various points, the Queen looks at the mirror asking "Who's the fairest of them all?," a reference to Snow White

• An obvious reference to Little Red Riding Hood early on as she is the first girl we see going missing, and another one later when another of the girls is talking to Jake's horse.

• A very obvious reference to Hansel and Gretel as Gretel becomes the second girl we see going missing.

• Right at the start of the movie, young Jacob trades his cow for magic beans, in a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk.

• The brothers are forced to do menial housework while their French captors take the food and gifts meant for them, cleaning the floor in an imitation of Cinderella.

• The Mirror Queen sleeps on a bed consisting of a tall pile mattresses stacked on top of each other, a reference to The Princess and the Pea.

• Official site from 6 August 2005, as indexed at Archive.org and retrieved 4 May 2007
• The Brothers Grimm at the Internet Movie Database
• The Brothers Grimm at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dreams (Terry Gilliam Fanzine): The Brothers Grimm
• Rambles.net review by Tom Knapp
• Interview with director Terry Gilliam at YoursDaily.com

v • d • e Films directed by Terry Gilliam

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) • Jabberwocky (1977) • Time Bandits (1981) • Brazil (1985) • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) • The Fisher King (1991) • Twelve Monkeys (1995) • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2000, unfinished) • The Brothers Grimm (2005) • Tideland (2005) • The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) Shorts: The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983) • Storytime • The Miracle of Flight