A film much beloved by some and I think if I'd seen it as a child I would have been one of them. It really needed to be 90 minutes and made as a regular film. It was dragged out to over two hours, the Cinerama photography is clunky (you can tell it was shot with three cameras).
Even then though it would have had problems - the surrounding storyline of the Grimm brothers is fairly (sorry for the pun), grim. Who cares about them having financial troubles, writing a paid gig for a duke or whoever. Karl Boehm and Laurence Harvey aren't very interesting; neither is Harvey's marriage to Claire Bloom (it's not happy) or less forgivably Boehm's romance with Barbara Eden.
The two brothers have some differences - Harvey is more happy go lucky Boehm more serious - but it's not that electric. Who cares if Harvey gets sick or continues to write? We want to focus on the stories!
Better are the sequences, which are charming. George Pal went for less familiar tales. Once MGM wanted to go to Cinerama I think this was a mistake - they should have gone for famous stories and star cameos.
But I loved the sets, the costumes, the location work in Bavaria, the puppetoons. Terry Thomas is fun as is Buddy Hackett; I liked Russ Tamblyn and Yvette Mimieux is an ideal princess.
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