The Brothers Grimm
So last night I went out to dinner with a friend of mine. I spotted a new restaurant on one of my walks back from dog park and suggested we try it out. Some sort of asian food thing. There were 'Grand Opening' flyers out front. We walk in and the place was totally deserted. But I felt good for helping out a local startup place. We sit down and the waitress comes over and plops down a drink menu featuring fancy $10 drinks and mumbles something about how the juice is homemade or something. $10 for anything that comes in a glass always is friggin ridiculous to me. We passed on the fancy drinks then waited 10 minutes for her to bring the actual food menu over.
On the menu the dishes seem like they had way too much going on. It was like, 'Stir fry chicken with scallion wrapped carrots and sauteed flower floppy mushrooms with a curry spiced hoisin pepper orange sauce over flat noodles over a rice and celery pancake garnished with currants.... or something. Ridiculous. The food came out and it was all terrible. The chef came out to say hello to us and we didn't know what to say. I didn't want to tell her that her cooking was way off (it was seriously bad) so I asked her how long they've been open for. She said 'Two months...' and I was like, 'Oh I thought this was the Grand Opening...' She was like, 'Yeah, umm... we're doing it...umm.. again...' I was like, '....oh.'
Anyway, after dinner we decided to on the fly go see Brothers Grimm. We each bought a 40oz at the deli (good call) and headed in. I was scared of this movie. I feared it might be torturous. I've never been a real big Terry Gilliam fan. I mean I've seen a bunch of his movies and have a vague sense of me liking them. But can't ever remember why I liked them- nor do I ever have a desire to refresh my memory.
So how was this movie? Terrible. An absolute trainwreck. Incomprehensible for the most part and blatantly awful.
That being said, it somehow wasn't a bad movie. It shot right passed regular bad and achieved a new level of stunningly bad. I'm surprised that the MPAA didn't flag it for indecency based on its badness. But somehow I liked it in a way. I liked how all the actors seemed trapped in the movie screaming to get out. Secretly embarrassed of their lines. I liked how random characters appeared and said a line then disappeared forever. I dug the cavernous leaps in editing which made my mouth drop open and my eyes blink. And I sort of enjoyed struggling to try and grasp onto any line of logic and feeling satisfied when I hit on one (oh! wow... I actually got it!)... like swatting a fly. It was weirdly watchable at that angle.
I just can't imagine what the Weinstein brothers must have thought when watching the dailies of this movie. (Maybe they hoped for a big rainstorm to wash the set away and make dollars on some sort of spinoff docu-film?) Because this movie spelled only one thing for them probably. T-h-e E-n-d. This flick was a mess on a par with Don Quixote... except this movie actually (amazingly) got made.
Three Good Things About this Movie
- I thought the acting was pretty good (although alot of the lines were
painful)
- It had some cool shots in the woods that were kind of fun.
- There was a level of wowee in watching 80 million dollars
disappear before your eyes.
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- Of all the stories in the whole wide world this one seemed like it should
have been ranked somewhere around 864,063.
- It wasn't nearly as funny as it should have been.
- The sets and special effects were right in sync with the movie.
Bottom line, this movie reminded me of the dinner I had at the restaurant that night. On the surface it looked like a good place. Maybe sort of interesting. A secret find? But the menu is a big hodgepodge of flavors and spices that make you wonder if they actually go together. Or maybe the chef is just being as creative as possible to make people who don't like it feel like they should --just based on how 'creative' and different it is. But no question, the food at that place was bad and there was a good reason that restaurant was empty. In the same way this movie was bad and the theater was empty. However, I gotta appreciate the fact on some level that I will remember that restaurant for a long time because of how bad that food was... as I'll remember this flick for a long time based on how ridiculously off it was.
....But it beats heartless, bland, and forgettable any day.