n the Grimm brothers' dark fables, deception is a necessary ingredient: a little old granny turns out to be a wolf; two children are lured by the promise of sweets, only to be pushed into an oven. So it's fitting that the film these two inspired takes such delight in blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. The brothers, renamed Will (Matt Damon) and Jake (Heath Ledger) in this tale, are con artists who travel from village to village pretending to protect townsfolk from enchanted creatures and conducting fake exorcisms. They travel to a cursed village where the townspeople are terrorized by dark fantasies that have begun to come true. Planning on pulling their usual scam, the two instead discover the curse-and the terror-are very real. The characters of Will and Jake pay homage to the original |
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Grimm brothers, but the
similarities only go so far. According to director Terry Gilliam (Time
Bandits, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys), "We owe the
brothers Grimm a lot of thanks for the film but the story isn't about their
historical lives. We've basically created a fairy tale about them." |