Grimm

Saw The Brothers Grimm last night. It gets off to a slow, shaky start then gathers momentum straight through to the finale. No, it's not Brazil. It's not even Time Bandits. But the creepy Gingerbread Man scene and the Company of Wolves-like forest setting make it fun.

In a nutshell: The Grimm brothers, Wilhelm and Jacob, are folklorists who also travel French-occupied Germany "solving" Scooby Doo-type problems with ghoulies. They're captured by the French and forced to solve a string of disappearances taking place in an enchanted wood (10 little girls have gone missing, among them Hans's sister Greta and a chick in a red cape). The pragmatic Will believes the forest itself is to blame, while magic-minded Jacob suspects something funky is taking place in an old tower. Monica Bellucci plays an evil crone, and Jonathan Pryce is a ruthless French general.

There's not much substance to this film and it could've used many more laughs (I don't find French accents as hilarious as Terry Gilliam does, I guess). Also, it doesn't fit into any standard genre: Too dark for young kids, yet not complex enough for repeated adult viewing, it straddles "dark fantasy" and "adventure". But if you've read Bruno Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment, you can get extra entertainment value by reading weird Freudian shit into every scene (magic beanstalks = premature ejaculation, etc.).