By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🎭 Follows two con artists staging fake magic for profit. Will and Jake use ropes, mirrors, and theatrical tricks to convince superstitious villagers they have banished ghosts and witches. Their entire livelihood depends on stagecraft rather than anything supernatural.
👬 Puts a specific brotherly dynamic at the center of the story. Will is skeptical and focused on money, while Jake is drawn to folklore and genuinely believes in magic. Their contrasting outlooks are tested once they encounter something they cannot fake their way out of.
👑 Introduces a genuinely magical antagonist with real stakes. A centuries old queen has been draining the life from young women to restore her own youth and beauty. Her presence forces the brothers to abandon their usual tricks and confront something real.
🪞 Reimagines familiar fairy tale elements in a new context. An enchanted forest, a cursed horse, and a wicked queen all appear as the movie builds toward stories that resemble the real Grimm fairy tales. Students can see how local legend and exaggeration might combine into the tales the brothers become known for.
⚔️ Builds toward a climax that requires genuine courage. The brothers have to give up their staged tricks and actually confront the queen to save the missing girls. Their eventual success depends on real bravery rather than any of their usual theatrical illusions.
📚 Offers a fictionalized take on well known historical figures. The movie takes significant liberties with the real Brothers Grimm, presenting them as charlatans rather than the scholarly folklore collectors they were. It gives students a way into discussing how historical figures get reimagined in fiction.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- The brothers are captured and threatened with torture and execution by a French general, and two side characters are beheaded off screen.
- The queen drains life from young women to restore her youth, and a horse and a mud creature each consume a girl on screen.
- There is one use of a stronger swear word along with milder language throughout.
- Adult characters drink alcohol and behave boisterously in tavern scenes.
- There are a few kisses and some sexual references, but no on screen sexual content.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. The Brothers Grimm hands students a story about how stories themselves get made, using two historical figures and a plot that borrows directly from the fairy tale tradition they would go on to publish. The guide is built for ELA, with differentiated comprehension questions at multiple levels and a creative writing task that pushes students to construct their own local legend rather than simply recall the plot.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The movie's fantasy elements, an enchanted forest, magical creatures, and a visually distinct villain, give students plenty to follow even when the dialogue moves quickly. The multiple choice comprehension set works well for ESL and ELL students, offering a more accessible way into the story alongside the full sentence question sets.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. Every activity in the guide is self contained and organized in sequence, with answer keys included for all three sets of comprehension questions. A substitute teacher can run the full session without having seen the movie beforehand.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. The Brothers Grimm works well for older home learners studying fairy tales or folklore, since it opens up real conversation about how stories get shaped by exaggeration and local legend. The guide's comprehension questions, creative planning task, and storyboard and synopsis activities all work for a single student, with the planning task offering a strong creative outlet alongside the more analytical comprehension work.
🎭 Theater Teachers. Will and Jake's entire con relies on genuine stagecraft, rigging scenes with ropes, mirrors, pulleys, and costumes to convince villagers they are witnessing real magic. The guide does not include a dedicated theater activity, but the comprehension questions give students a structured task to complete while they track how the brothers construct each illusion.
🔭 STEM Teachers. The brothers' fake exorcisms depend on mechanical contraptions and staged rigs, giving STEM teachers a genuine example of applied engineering used for stagecraft rather than its usual purpose. The guide does not include STEM specific activities, but the comprehension questions provide structure and accountability for students following how those devices work.
🌟 Supporting All Learners Movie guides can be a wonderfully calm fit for students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities. The structured format gives every student a clear purpose during viewing, easing uncertainty and allowing them to engage at their own pace. If you teach in a special education or learning support setting, you may find this guide a gentle and practical resource. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Three full sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order, a 40 question set requiring full sentence answers, a 30 question set requiring full sentence answers with 10 questions removed from the 40 question set, and 30 multiple choice questions with 3 possible answers. The multiple choice set also works well with ESL and ELL students. Answer keys are included.
Part 2: Designing a Plan to Remove a Monster
Students imagine they are part of Will and Jake's crew and must design a new elaborate plan to fleece a town, including making up a local legend to use in the town, designing at least one new contraption to use against the monster and explaining how it works, planning how they will defeat the monster, and creating a layout of the stage where the confrontation will happen.
Part 3: Storyboard and Synopsis
Students draw a nine scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene, then use the storyboard as a guide to write a synopsis of the movie.
“Fantastic resource. The answer key and teacher notes made it super easy to implement.”
— Masters Teaching Co. (TPT Seller)
“use it with my twisted tales unit, very interesting and a good complement for my unit. thks”
— Antoine L.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
A movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work that can actually be assessed: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
