Just got back from seeing The Brothers Grimm.

We saw it Silver Screen at Macquarie Centre. It’s the first time I’ve been to a Silver Screen session, and bluntly, I’m not really impressed.

The screen and the seats are big, but the chairs aren’t recliners, they’re fixed-position. This ironically led to some convoluted ways of trying to get my legs comfortable when the seat in front was out of range (so nothing to lean them against). I quite like the regular chairs in the other cinemas, and the Gold Class recliners are also pretty good – this seemed to be a Worst Of Both Worlds setup. Still, she liked it.

Anyway, the movie wasn’t bad, but it’s not likely to win any awards either. For some reason, much of the acting seemed somehow ripped from a Swedish porn film, with some atrocious dubbing and lip sync that evem a Mentos ad would be ashamed of, particularly from Anjelika’s father.

Matt Damon does a really good job, though with the mix of accents in the film, he wins points just for consistency. Jonathan Pryce turns in a characteristically excellent performance as le petit French general. Peter Stormare is disappointing as the French ?but italian accented? rogue soldier, and seems to have gone a little bit overboard hamming it up; younger kids will probably love it. Monica Bellucci… well, you didn’t see enough of her. Heath Ledger was passable, but I can’t help thinking he might have been miscast.

Conceptually, it seemed a bit muddled – it didn’t really commit to any particular story of the Brothers Grimm, instead choosing to mash just a teeny, tiny bit of them all in, and suffering for it. There was some mild horror, but it was inconsistently applied – it could have easily been tweaked just a little and ended up a little scarier, but in some parts, it seems to get the Disney treatment.

It was visually very interesting, with a lot of detail packed into most of the scenes and some clever and watchable action sequences, but some of the CG was pretty obviously CG, and that was a jarring reminder that it wasn’t real. Pity. The high point was the original witching sequence, which was visually stunning and set the movie up well.

Anyway, as I said before, not bad, but probably won’t win any awards. Didn’t want to sue for my money back.

3 stars out of 5.