Grimm (2003)

One of my all time favorites.

Beautiful, moving film.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"Grimm" is a strange re-working of the old story of Hansel and Gretel. However, it's been changed so much that you can hardly call it "Hansel and Gretel"--particularly since the characters' names are Jacob and Marie.This bizarre story begins with a starving family in Holland during a cold winter. They have no food and the father and mother's plan is to abandon their two 'kids' in the woods and have them fend for themselves. However, they are NOT exactly young, as they both look to be about 30! And, you wonder how stupid they must be that they can't find their way out of the woods! Regardless, they trudge about for a while until they come upon a dying dog and eat it. Soon the dog's owner catches them and brings them home--and forces Jacob to have sex with his ugly wife. They manage to escape soon after and this is only in the first 15 minutes of the film! What follows is their trek to Spain with even more VERY child-unfriendly material including incest, robbery, prostitution, a closeup shot of a dead dog and incestuous jealousy. It's all pretty nasty and reminds me of an Almondovar film, such as "What Have I Done to Deserve This?"--where just about every social norm is violated, although it never is 100% apparent if this is meant as comedy or horror film. But frankly, other than shocking the viewer, is there any real point to all this? I sure didn't know and that is why I kept watching...hoping that the film would ultimately prove satisfying.Could this sick material have worked? Possibly, though I doubt it because it was just so sleazy and gross. However, making the two main characters so unlikable (as is EVERYONE in this film) didn't help matters any. It also didn't help that the plot seemed very meandering and often pointless. Overall, the film is just bizarre and yucky just to be bizarre and yucky. The only things I really found of interest was the escape from the ugly woman (this was rather funny) and seeing an old Spanish/Italian western movie set at the end.

Director Alex van Warmerdam is known for his own sort of surreal and absurd style of film-making, that however never feel too artistic or forced, which makes all of his movies also perfectly watchable for most large public groups. I'm not too sure if this entirely also goes for "Grimm". Yes, it's an entertaining movie if you just sit back and relax but unfortunately it also isn't a very well constructed movie.The movie would often change style as the movie progresses. The movie begins as a modern fairytale, with some of the generic elements in it. It however jumps too fast from scene to scene. It doesn't always feel like it's wrapping up things properly. Then the movie almost suddenly stops and slows down once the two characters get to Spain. The movie becomes an entirely different one again.The middle part and till some extend would had made a fairly good movie on its own but keeping in the mind the first part of the movie it makes you realize how utterly pointless that part was, since it doesn't really connect with the rest of the movie. That's why I simply can't regard this movie as a successful one. It's way too disjointed all.I can definitely understand van Warmerdam's intentions with this movie but it just doesn't all translate to the screen very well. He probably thought he was making his "El Topo".No matter how hard Halina Reijn tries, she and Jacob Derwig, who play brother and sister in this movie, just don't have much chemistry together. I blame Jacob Derwig for this, since his acting seems to be a bit below average at points. I just never have been a too big fan of his acting abilities. The movie is filled with some other well known Dutch and I suppose also fairly well known Spanish actors, in some small as well as some bigger roles. Some are well cast, others obviously aren't.The movie is good looking, with professional cinematography. Also very little wrong with the actual directing of it all, they just didn't had the best material to work with in the long run.Has some quality but it just isn't the best watchable movie.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

As mentioned in the title, Grimm is, what I hear, based on the fairy tale of Hansel & Gretel. That sounded good but the movie I watched really had nothing to do with the story I knew. What we get is a decent, yet dark, movie that had some amusing moments.Maria (Halina Reijn) and Jacob (Jacob Derwig) are an adult brother and sister who appears to have a sexual relationship as well. Gotta love the Dutch movie makers. Anyhow, Maria and Jacob are abandoned in the woods early on in the movie by their parents because they could no longer afford to take care of them. After the realization of their abandonment, they calm down and find a note from their mother in Maria's pocket. The note tells them to go to Spain and find their uncle who would be able to take care of them.After a rough trip, they arrive at the address to find their uncle has died, which leaves them with nowhere to go. As you could probably guess, the siblings take to a life of vagrancy & crime to survive until Maria meets Diego (Carmelo Gómez), who kindly takes them in. At this point in the movie, you know that nothing good will ever happen to Maria & Jacob so Diego can't be good.That seems to be the theme of the movie. I do not think they find one person who actually helps them out in the movie. Possibly, this is the resemblance to the fairy tale but, in all honesty, it does not seem similar at all to me, with minor exceptions of being lost in a forest, running into evil people, etc.Overall, it was a decent movie that I felt could have done without the Hansel & Gretel connection. However, I surely would not have been as interested if they did not make that connection. It is what intrigued me to begin with, I suppose, but it is not what held my attention. The dark and sometimes humorous scenes are what kept me watching. This was not as good as I expected, however, I have spent my time in worse ways and on worse movies in the past. 6/10

You might propably not like this film at all. I think this is of these films that need the viewer to be open minded. You should not go and view it if you are stuck to reality, or too used to Hollywood blockbusters. If you are one of those who say: No, you cannot go from Holland to Spain with one tank of gasoline, you should never watch this film! However, if you feel that odd things might very well be possible in films, and you don't care about odd things in films, this might be the one for you!I think viewing it requires a bit of knowledge about fairy tales. Yes, the ones by the GRIMM brothers. The same way as the Coen Brothers knew how to use an old existing story and place it in modern times without loosing the context, Alex van Warmerdam took a story and found how to remake it in a modern way. The same sense of absurd humor, but maybe a little less funny, than o brother were art thou. van Warmerdam, however knew very well how to keep the way of storytelling by the grimm brothers intact. The flickering way of storytelling, combined with a fine feeling of suspense, makes this into one of my best Dutch films recently.