Only a cinematic genius like Terry Gilliam could make an unqualified masterful mess like the long-delayed fantastical adventure “The Brothers Grimm” and still come out looking brilliant. Not since Ridley Scott took on “Legend” and Neil Jordan wandered these same storybook passages with the sexually beastly “The Company of Wolves” has so much time and money been spent in order to craft something so utterly mystifying. The movie is a disaster; a giddy self-indulgent completely impossible to take your eyes off of it richly detailed visually poetic disaster, and goodness knows if it weren’t all so terrible I’d almost want to admit to loving it.

Grimm brothers Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob (Heath Ledger) use their in-depth knowledge of local folklore and fairy tales to scam villagers throughout the early 19th century French and German countryside. It’s a lucrative living, the duo getting to play at being heroes while everyone around them actually believes them to be the real thing. But when the region’s French prefect General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) decides to put an end to the twosome’s nefarious shenanigans, he sends them to the small township of Marbaden to discover who is abducting the community’s female children.

Once there, Will and Jake are aided by the mysterious trapper Angelika (Lena Heady), a beautiful loner with strange ties to the surreal forest surrounding the town. Under the constant gaze of dastardly Italian torture specialist Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), the duo begin to come to the conclusion many of the gothic tales at the center of their research are in fact quite real. All the clues – as well as the reason why all of the girls have been kidnapped – are locked in a dilapidated tower in the center of the forest, guarded by a vane sorceress (Monica Bellucci, vamping it up splendidly) cursed with eternal life but not eternal beauty. With time against them, the brothers find that they must stop pretending to be heroes and actually take up the mantle of the real thing. Otherwise, this evil queen’s power of mystic deception will escape out into the real world, destroying Angelika, Marbaden and all the lost children with its release.

And so goes this strange and startlingly original foray into the world of fairy tales and pure surrealistic imagination. Those looking for an accurate account of the real Brothers Grimm might want to head to the library and find a good biography because historical fiction is the last thing on Gilliam and screenwriter Ehren Krueger’s mind. Instead, they’ve constructed a larger-than-life, “what if?” scenario with Wilhelm and Jacob right at the very center. In all fairness, it is an astonishingly novel concept, and even if the writer has gone down this road once before (with Tim Burton on “Sleepy Hollow”) it still seems like it should be a concept right up the idiosyncratic Gilliam’s alley.

Considering he’s the man behind such sensationally peculiar concoctions like “Brazil,” “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “The Fisher King,” “12 Monkeys” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” that’s not a bad leap to make. Certainly, “The Brothers Grimm” is a visual marvel with darkly psychotic humor distinctly its own. There are moments here, like the unfortunate demise of a snow-white kitten or of a horse devouring a 12-year-old girl whole, which simply must be seen to be fully appreciated. They’re macabre and viciously funny, so dastardly wicked a person can’t help but laugh out loud.

But the movie itself has no idea what it is or what it’s about. At any given moment the movie is a Monty Python-like comedy, a David Fincher-type exercise in horror, a cuddly Jim Henson family-friendly epic, an Ed Wood schlock-fest and a Steven Spielberg hero-worshiping action-adventure. Throughout the whole thing the characters literally run around in circles, returning like Don Quixote to the same spot time and time again to battle the very same evil just like that Spanish conquistador (who’s story Gilliam tried to film unsuccessfully, the misfortune of which is chronicled brilliantly in the documentary “Lost in La Mancha”) kept trying to take down that darned windmill. Maybe the director is still stewing about seeing his dream project about Quixote crumble. Maybe he and Kruger spent all of producer’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s money on that one spectacular forest set. Maybe they just ran out of ideas. Who knows, but no matter the reasons why this is still a strangely stagnant adventure stuck running in place for far too much of the time.

The thing is, that’s the least of the movie’s problems. Every actor seems to be in a different production. Hedley takes it all dead-seriously. Damon tries to perfect on accent more Australian than British (and considering his character is German that’s odd no matter which one he’s really going for). Ledger is test-running the whiny weasel wheeze he showcased in “The Lords of Dogtown,” while Pryce is so dastardly French he might as well as be asking for shrubbery (John Cleese would be proud). Topping them all is Stormare. I’m not exactly sure what accent exactly he’s trying to do but it sure isn’t Italian. In fact, he’s so absurd, so tightly wound up behind his Snidely Whiplash mustache and fake foppish bravado, he might just be brilliant if he wasn’t so ludicrous. And yet, I simply cannot get him out of my head, the performance so one-of-a-kind and original the sheer audacity of it just has to count for something.

Of course, based on all of this it is easy to see why this fantasy has spent so much time gathering dust in Miramax’s Dimension Vaults, no one working for the studio (including Harvey and Bob) having the slightest clue as to what to do with it. Only now, as their partnership with Disney is dissolving, does Gilliam’s epic see the light of day, the duo probably more than happy to leave their problem child in their former parent company’s hands and as far away from their own as possible. Too bad, really, for even with all my tearing it to pieces “The Brothers Grimm” is still entirely unique and made with the vivid imagination only a master filmmaker can muster. The look and feel is unlike anything I’ve seen in ages, and for something falling apart at the seams it’s never boring. More so, it’s virtually impossible to look away, Gilliam’s bag of tricks so wide open I never quite knew what he’d throw up on the screen.

As for the classic Grimm fairy tales, all the ones you know and love (and some you don’t know but surely would love if you did) are here in one form or another. Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Snow White, The Frog Prince, Cinderella, The Gingerbread Man; all these and more make an appearance and trying to name them all becomes a visual game all its own. Sure it’s not enough, not by a long shot, but sometimes watching a master fall on his face is far more interesting – and strangely entertaining – than watching some hack journeyman hit a benign single just past the infield. That’s certainly the case here, “The Brothers Grimm” a fractured fairy tale hard to like yet impossible to resist.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)