Opera crashed again, trying to reconstruct what I’d written (for the record, nothing to do with Opera itself, just me overworking the computer as usual I expect).

I wrote something about how it’s sometimes easy to forget that Terry Gilliam was one of the Pythons, because while his movies are undoubtedly weird and wacky, his themes tend often to be much more sinister and sombre than any of the Monty Python stuff. From the posters etc. of this movie, I kind of didn’t expect the very Pythonesque tone of this movie, and were it not for one moment early on, I could’ve really been turned off by it. The moment in question is right at the beginning, when one of the brothers (I forget which one) yells “Run!” and it just so immediately called to mind that “Run away! Run away!” moment in Holy Grail that I immediately burst into laughter and found myself in exactly the mood I think you need to be in to enjoy this movie. It’s a bit of silliness, more Pirates of the Caribbean (Jonathan Pryce and Mackenzie Crook – who I swear must’ve been taking tips from Johnny Depp, he’s hilarious in this – help that comparison) or Sleepy Hollow than, say The Company of Wolves.

It’s still not great … but I’m glad I was able to make the mood switch and ‘get it’ more than I might have on a different day. Heath Ledger and Matt Damon are a couple of actors I’ve only just got over hating (Ledger in Brokeback Mountain and Lords of Dogtown, Damon … okay maybe I’m still working on him), but they’re both brilliant here, and some of the visual effects are so brilliantly conceived and so outright creepy – the gingerbread man, the queen in the mirror – that the perfect execution of them is just icing on the cake. Will I watch it again? In a Terry Gilliam revue, maybe … but it was fun while it lasted.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 6:50 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.