I admit to anticipating with pleasure any film directed by Terry Gilliam. Once the creative genius behind Monty Python’s bizarre, stylized animations—the foot stomps and hinged heads— Gilliam began directing feature films with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (co-directed by Terry Jones). He mastered a string of my personal favorites in the following years: “Time Bandits” in 1981, “Brazil” in ’85 and the astounding “Fisher King” in ’91. His most successful effort was the chilling and apocolyptic “Twelve Monkeys,” with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. Mainstream audiences may not always have understood him, but we who are left-brainlite tend to appreciate his off-balanced humor and peculiar vision. Some have called him iconoclastic and I’d have to agree.

So I was a bit disappointed by “The Brothers Grimm,” Gilliam’s latest effort. This odd combination of fable and spoof is less a comprehensive story as it is a stylized smorgasbord of frantic action in search of a stable plot line. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger play the brothers of note, Wilhelm and Jacob, the latter dutifully recording their adventures throughout Europe in a notebook that he hopes to someday publish.

And so the brothers take to the back roads in search of folklore. Yet for some incomprehensible reason, Gilliam has decided to make Wilhelm and Jacob charlatans as well as scholars. The Brothers Grimm are 18th-century con artists who inflict irrational fear on simple townsfolk only to exorcise the ghouls themselves, for money. Gilliam also has Napoleon’s French army plundering Germany—a side story that makes little sense here, other than providing the Grimms with a suitable antagonist in the guise of the loutish French Gen. Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) and his increasingly annoying Italian henchman, Cavaldi (Peter Stormare). Gilliam does love his uniforms. And dungeons (I do believe there is a cagefilled dungeon in every Gilliam film I’ve seen).

“The Brothers Grimm” is a marvelously rendered movie, beautifully stylized and choreographed. I only wish the plot had been less chaotic. Even for a Terry Gilliam film—which lends itself

to chaos—I felt too often distracted by inconsistencies and what I felt were incomplete scenes. We are deluged with vignettes of well-known folklorein-the-making: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, The Gingerbread Man, Rapunzel and Snow White, which many people still believe to be a Walt Disney concoction. But for those who may be unaware that these tales were collected by the Brothers Grimm, such sequences appear disjointed and out of place.

There are also a few incongruously gruesome shots thrown in—bodies pulled apart and beheadings among them—and while such violence isn’t beyond Gilliam’s realm, the sudden appearance of such carnage was a little surprising. Younger children (under 9 or 10 years old) may be alarmed, so do take note. A child’s film this isn’t.

Wilhelm and Jacob are ultimately forced by Gen. Delatombe to the German village of Marbaden, where inexplicable magic is snatching away little girls, one at a time. The general suspects foul play (not magic) and the brothers are obliged not only to prove that magical forces are involved, but also to save the bevy of missing children.

I found a kind of stylized kinship to 2003’s “Van Helsing” in terms of the movie’s frenetic energy and its barrage of supernatural elements, thrown helterskelter at the audience in a kind of breathless abandon.

I also suspect that much of “The Brothers Grimm” may have been left on the cuttingroom floor, contributing to the film’s sometimes uneven feel. If so, it’s a pity, as the film really is fun to watch and beautiful to behold. A more stable effort and more cohesive plot might have made it a very worthy treat indeed.

In a nutshell: Die-hard Gilliam fans may overlook the choppy sequences and lackluster plot, although I suspect that most people will feel “The Brothers Grimm” could have been a much better, more cohesive effort. Still, it’s a beautifully stylized film, and if you’re a fan of the frenetically paced supernatural thriller, this one may work for you.