"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.
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.