Don't respond, Terry...you'll only encourage them:
Terry Gilliam is convinced The Brothers Grimm has been critically slammed because an adult audience is too narrow-minded to appreciate his fantasy-driven work. The quirky director insists the film was a "desperate attempt" to smash cynicism and bring out the child in the viewer, even though The Brothers Grimm has been dismissed by one critic as a "fiasco... too violent for children and too inane for anybody else". He says, "Everybody has their opinion and some people are wrong. One of the things I enjoy about my films is that children really love them. They are open-minded. As we get older we seem to close in. We limit the size of the world we limit everything about it. We have to break that shell open sometimes and Grimm is just a desperate attempt to do so."
Yeah, the kids just begged their parents for permission to stay up late and watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Twelve Monkeys.
Gilliam isn't the first person to discuss the ossification of imagination that occurs when we get older, and one of his welcome trademarks has always been the way he manages to introduce the fantastics into what is often a mundane setting. But he needs to make up his mind about Grimm, the movie he said he "thought he liked" in an EW interview, and which he hinted might not be his most capable effort in interviews during the weeks leading up to its release.
As one of the narrow-minded critics who didn't care for The Brothers Grimm, I appreciate Gilliam being protective of his baby, but all this talk of "smashing cynicism" (Heath smash!) is a bit after the fact for my tastes.
I still like Gilliam, for all his bitching, so he can be forgiven for going a little Rob Schneider on us.
Jeebus, is he trying to catch up to Oliver Stone for whiney bitch of the year?
Terry, it sucked, don't do that again.
After watching Lost in La Mancha and then The Brothers Grimm, I can't shake the thought that Terry is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. If he wants to do a commercially successful film thus ensuring financial backing for later ventures, he has to bow to the gods of mayhem and violence. But he isn't a commercial film director. He's creative and not formulaic and that presents problems for him when it comes to luring backers with bags of money to his projects.
children really love them? i'm still having nightmares about the gingerbread man scene!