In theaters

THE BROTHERS GRIMM, directed by Terry Gilliam, written by Ehren Kruger, 118 minutes, rated PG-13.

Everyone in the movie business has at least one belly-flop in them, so it’s especially efficient that in “The Brothers Grimm,” so many people came together to achieve just that. The amount of teamwork that went into creating this film – one of the summer’s worst, most disparaging efforts – is incredible. Was it a planned effort? Unlikely. Still, there are moments in “Grimm” when you have to wonder at what point these otherwise talented folks realized just how deeply they were stepping in it.

From director Terry Gilliam, whose “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Time Bandits” and “Brazil” are fine examples of how good he can be, “Grimm” is a terrific example of how bad he can be. His film is a disappointing, chaotic mess.

The curious thing is that this won’t come as a surprise to Gilliam or to the film’s studio, Dimension Films. For nearly a year, this $80 million movie sat moldering on a shelf, no doubt attracting flies, with Gilliam abandoning the project for another until he was contractually forced to finish it.

Whatever Band-Aid he applied in the process apparently fell off. The film features a story that’s so fractured, it has gone missing, with only special effects and a malaise of hysteria left to support it. They’re not enough.

Lead actors Matt Damon and Heath Ledger are bamboozled as the brothers Grimm. They’re so lost in their roles, they have no clue how to approach their characters – and really, why should they, considering the characters in this movie are tertiary to everything else? Never is this more apparent than when the actors resort to shtick, always a bellwether of desperation, particularly when it doesn’t come off well, as it doesn’t here.

Based on Ehren Kruger’s script, “The Brothers Grimm” imagines the Grimms not as the influential German folklorists who put to paper some of the best tales of their day (“Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Gingerbread Man,” among others), but as two con men in French-occupied Germany who are falsely exorcizing village demons in an effort to rob the villagers of their money. If the real Grimms were alive today, they’d have a sweet libel suit on their hands.

It’s this messing with history that assists in ruining the film, cheapening what the Grimms created while dumbing down their legacy for the masses. What follows is just as stupid. Deep in the forest that surrounds the village of Marbaden, it turns out that evil really is simmering, with little girls mysteriously being swallowed up whole. The Grimms are ordered by Napoleon’s arch Gen. Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) to find out what happened – or else.

Joining them along the way is a rough-and-tumble hunter (Lena Hedley) with wild eyes and a sporty jungle drag. Monica Bellucci is the mad queen in the Mardi Gras hoo-ha who brings to mind visions of the queen in “Snow White.” Nice cast, for sure, but Gilliam and Kruger prove crueler than the evil they create.

They turn their actors into a cast of village idiots, with the knee-jerk acting, stunted dialogue and lack of a coherent story line forming a noose that hangs them all.

Grade: D-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, Weekends in Television, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.