Friday is for Fairytales: The Grimm Brothers (movie)

Friday is for Fairytales is a meme hosted by Irena (me) at This Miss loves to Read. Every Friday, you can choose a fairytale you love, or simply find interesting or haunting, and review it or simply say why you like it so much, or why it has captured your attention. Instead of a fairytale, you can choose a favourite fairytale character and describe him/her and tell us why you like them, or you can simply share an experience connected to a fairytale. Fairytales can be old and modern, written by a known author or anonymous, written down or passed on orally, short or in novel form (like re-writings of fairytales), international or typical for your country alone. In this case, present your country’s fairytale and we can all become acquainted with a new fairytale. So, make a post every Friday that is connected to the world of fairytales, be it a review, a character description or your own fairytale experience. Let’s celebrate fairytales and share our love for them.

MY POST IS ABOUT: The Grimm Brothers (movie)



I really love this movie! Some parts of it may have been awkwardly handled, but it stars the Grimm brothers and features many famous fairy-tales, cleverly connected into one story.

To make this clear first, the fairy-tales that are referenced in the movie are:
- Red Riding Hood (we see a girl wearing a red cape walking into the woods and encountering something bad in there; there are also the heroic woodsman and the Big Bad Wolf, who is actually half human, half wolf in this movie – not a werewolf, mind you)
- Rapunzel (this fairy-tale is in the centre of the movie; in this movie, Rapunzel is an evil beautiful queen who locks herself in a high tower to escape a plague and she has incredibly long hair, which saves one of the Grimm brothers when he falls off the tower and grabs her hair)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (a mirror that the evil queen uses is an element from this fairy-tale)
- Sleeping Beauty (the little girls’ fingers are pricked and they fall into deep slumber; a kiss saves the “princess”)
- Cinderella (the sleeping girls are wearing glass slippers)
- The Gingerbread Man (there is an actual Gingerbread Man in the movie)
- Hans and Gretel (two children, named Hans and Gretel, wander in the woods and get into big trouble)
- Jack and the Beanstalk (Jake, or rather Jacob Grimm, believed in magical beans as a child)
- Rumpelstiltskin (Jake tells everyone a story of an imp whose name they had to guess)

That’s what I noticed. If there’s more, I don’t know.

Anyway, this movie is a feast for fairy-tale lovers. It’s made as a historical thriller/mystery. In the beginning, Will and Jake Grimm are two frauds who live by the naivety of the country folk. They use folk legends to earn money from the gullible villagers of Germany. Eventually, this turns against them and they become caught in a real mysterious and dangerous set of events, and only their knowledge of folk legends can save them. At the end of the movie, it is hinted that the brothers will stop being frauds and will start making a living by writing their incredible events down in the form of fairy-tales.

I really had a lot of fun trying to detect all of the fairy-tales the filmmakers used. I recommend you see this movie. It’s a lot of fun.