It was a brave studio exec who let Terry Gilliam lens another fairytale pic. After all, his last - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - is a mainstay on the ‘most unprofitable films of all time’ list.

However, The Brothers Grimm is a more straightforward and successful attempt at a folklore action-adventure. Roaming from village to village, Jake and Will Grimm are the ultimate con-men.

Feeding off scary tales of wicked witches and demons, they set up and play out their parlour tricks on gullible country folk and then ‘exorcise’ the evil. For a fee, of course.

Life is good until they are hauled up in front of a Napoleonic general (Pryce) and forced to travel to a distant village where young girls are allegedly disappearing in a nearby forest.

The general believes that the reports are a hoax, so unless Jake and Will expose the reports as fake, they face execution for their past misdemeanours.

Their investigation turns extremely sinister as they delve deeper into the (murderous) trees and unmask the real villain of the piece… one with the catchphrase “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…”

While getting into a few fights and frequently running away, the brothers come across a host of familiar characters, with cameos from Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel And Gretel, The Gingerbread Man and The Big Bad Wolf.

Though slow in parts, the film is undeniably a visual feast and Damon and Ledger acquit themselves well as the bickering, lily-livered brothers who quickly realise they are out of their depth.

Gilliam adds a moral undertone to proceedings with references to brotherly love and acts of self-sacrifice that, though contrived, add weight to the films more whimsical fantasies.

But for the surplus of distracting accents (from Headey’s Hudders-fraulein to Damon’s Dick Van Dyke-like cockney stylings) and occasional bouts of over-acting, the movie delivers the goods in the final act.

Be warned, cute animals get a raw deal (literally) and children may recoil from some of the more scary set-pieces.

Jack Tsang