By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Three full sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included.
- 40 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers (10 questions removed from the 40 question set).
- 30 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers. The multiple choice set also works well with ESL and ELL students.
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.
- A nine scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using the storyboard as a guide.
“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.
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 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.
⚠️ 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.
📋 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)
Note for educators: Movie details and age ratings in this post are sourced from IMDb, Common Sense Media, and Wikipedia to help ensure accuracy.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
Click your subject below to see how this guide supports it:
📚 English Language Arts Teachers
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
🎭 Theater Teachers
🔭 STEM Teachers
🌟 Supporting All Learners A movie gives students a story to follow, and the guide gives them questions to work through as they watch. For students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities, that combination provides a clear focus for the lesson and a concrete way to show understanding. The format can be useful in special education and learning support classrooms, where teachers need activities that give students a defined task during viewing. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
Watching 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 you can grade: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
