Review – The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

This picture is remarkable for a handful of reasons. First, it’s just weird to see Laurence Harvey in something besides The Manchurian Candidate, especially a role as benign as the one he plays here. Second, George Pal’s Puppetoons are always a treat to see, even if they were somewhat outmoded by this point in film history. But the big “star” here is Cinerama, a technique that achieved a really wide aspect ratio by breaking the picture down into three separate strips of film shown side by side. Cinerama allowed for some disturbingly short focal lengths, giving the movie a simultaneous stretched-out and fish-eye look. It also caused problems for the print I saw: the seams between the projections were often painfully visible, and sometimes the film quality varied between thirds of the same picture. Beyond the movie’s technical daring, however, it’s mostly just remarkably long and remarkably boring, yet another picture too dumb for adults and too dull for kids. Mildly amusing