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Best movie of this year hands down!

Sadly Over-hyped

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Alex van Warmerdam is a wickedly mischievous director who seems to specialize in the theatre of the disconnected, which is appropriate. Disconnection is a prime motif in society. Most things we do, see and say every day don't make much sense.Aside from writing and directing, Warmerdam is also a wonderful actor given to playing overwhelmed characters who are never really sure why they're alive. In one of his previous films (the unsettling 'Little Tony'), he directed himself as a stone-faced, harassed and bewildered farmer beset by a brutish wife determined to have a child at any cost. It was way off-kilter in its darkly comic exposition. In 'Grimm,' this iconoclastic Dutchman takes us on a disjointed, other-worldly ride that lacks a traditional narrative arc. But this 'journey' has so many interesting (and inventive) comedic and dramatic riffs that you can't help but be drawn into it. It is never dull because we simply don't know what's going to happen next, up to and including a nomadic donkey, an involuntary kidney transplant, and an absurd showdown in a Spanish ghost town between a guy with a shotgun and another with a bow and arrow. This film is quirky and fresh, and keeps you off balance. Aside from unexpected bursts of gallows comedy, it can also be dark, with malicious and disturbing set pieces. Warmerdam shows us brilliant cinematic contrasts between the gloom of the Netherlands forests and the blaring brightness of the Spanish countryside. The dichotomy between light and dark is very evident in this film and very evident in Warmerdam's predilection for dark/light humour and quasi-surreal drama.Throughout the film, Warmerdam reminds us that this is a modern fairy tale (hence the Grimm title). Things don't naturally follow, characters are 'transported' illogically, relationships just magically happen, and epiphanies abound. Halina Reijn as Maria and Jacob Derwig as her brother Jacob are terrific playing siblings involved in a lovingly incestuous relationship that is so casual it never really speaks its name. This is Warmerdam at his mischievous and satirical best: haven't we, with our overactive, dirty little minds, always suspected there might have been more to the Hansel and Gretel story than two lost kids courting danger in the forest? Incest, of course, is taboo, and you would never see it in a Hollywood flick unless it was done as high drama or tragedy. But Maria and Jacob really do love each other in the true sense of love. In the Netherlands, the mind is a bit more expansive.

On a winter's day a cold-hearted father abandons his son Jacob and daughter Maria in the woods, while they were off looking for firewood. After they can't find their father, Jacob finds a letter in his coat from his mother telling them to go Spain to live with their uncle. While on this journey they bump into some conniving people, also they commit some of devilish crimes and most of the time find themselves in some bizarre circumstances.*Shrug Shoulders* Um… yeah. Well, that's what I felt after this film had finished. It just has some type of spell over you, because what you are seeing on screen is outrageously awkward, highly unpredictable and a striking amount of imagination. The story loosely takes on the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, but goes for a more grownup approach, which is filled with dark humour, incredibly odd adventures and like the title implies a grim nature. Even with all this imagination that went into it, there's something about it that left me undecided what to feel. It's hardly bad, as it had a hypnotic trance on me, but at the end I wasn't hugely impressed, as it seems to run out of steam after the half way mark. Which is a shame, as it had potential with its surreal setup and strange surprises but it becomes ponderously slow and the bizarre nature of it seems to fall by the way side in the third act. The plot… well, there really isn't one, because it's nothing but one comical episode after another and some don't make too much sense or add any real cohesion to proceedings. To make matters worse the characters, especially Jacob and Maria are glazed over and because of that they're hard to like or to connect with. But that doesn't take away from the overall performances, which I thought was generally good. Also other notables worked into the film is a lot of demented and deadpan humour, which either was an hit or a miss and also the sexual context was downright kinky. These generally bleak adventures the two encounter are highly out of the blue and hold a tremendous amount of impact, as the film bursts at the seams with a touch of fairytale magic. Other things that truly kept me glued were the slick cinematography that captured such ravishing scenery from woodlands, to desert terrains and an eerie ghost town. Backing up what we saw on screen was an impressive soundtrack that mixed a lot twang, from country, to rock and some indie. In all, weird… just plain weird! A promising idea that's hypnotically enchanting, but it never reached the great heights like I wished it did.

Yet another stab at making a contemporary adult (as in intended audience not porn) version of the Grimm brothers' fairy tales. Past efforts have gone in two directions - a focus on the psychosexual dimensions as in Neil Jordan's IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES or emphasize the trashy, lurid aspects as in Matthew Bright's FREEWAY. Or do both like in Francois Ozon's LES AMANTS CRIMINELS. GRIMM hints at both but ends up going in neither. It's just way too restrained for its own good. Weird but not strange enough, dark but not dark enough, lurid but not lurid enough, the film ends up being pointless and tedious. Opening with clear Grimm Bros inspiration as our two protagonists are abandoned in the woods by their father, the film quickly abandons its early premise (as well as its promise) and loses any focus as they arrive in Spain. A sure sign of a problem is the best thing I can say about the film is its inspired choice of a set - the use of an abandoned Wild West ghost town leftover from Spaghetti Westerns.

Although this movie has it's funny moments, yes and even good acting. The story lacks any kind of substance, it is totally rubbish!!. They first thought of some funny situations and than tried to make a story out of it. Only, they failed!! This is in no way a Dutch Master.