Search form

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988) (***1/2)

Check Out the Trailer

Terry Gilliam is a director fascinated with fantasy and the bizarre. BARON MUNCHAUSEN is an ode to that love. The film throws logic out the window with a joyous glee, creating an epic fairy tale about an old adventurer reclaiming the excitement of life.

Sally Salt (Sarah Polly, THE SWEET HEREAFTER) is a young girl, whose father Henry (Bill Paterson, HILARY AND JACKIE) runs a theatre company. The company is performing a play on the fantastic life of Baron Munchausen when an elderly man shows up claiming to be the real Munchausen (John Neville, SPIDER). He begins to tell his "real" story, which mixes reality with fantasy backwards and forewords. Munchausen ends up on an adventure with Sally that leads to the moon, the fiery pits of a volcano, the other side of the world and the stomach of a giant fish. Along the way they run into Munchausen's old servants Berthold (Eric Idle, LIFE OF BRIAN), Adolphus (Charles McKeown, BRAZIL), Albrecht (Winston Dennis, TIME BANDITS) and Gustavas (Jack Purvis, MONA LISA). The servants all had superhuman gifts, but now they are too old to use them. Yet Munchausen still tries to enlist them in a crusade against the Sultan (Peter Jeffrey, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS), who is waging war against the city and threatening the lives of Sally's father and the other actors.

Neville presents Baron Munchausen as an endlessly optimistic adventurer who only looks forward. He heads off into each adventure with total abandon. He's very matter of fact out the fantastic, because he doesn't view it that way. Polly, showing her talent at a young age, looks up to the Baron at first and is captivated with his fantastic stories, but comes to question his sanity when his tunnel vision often gets them deeper and deeper into trouble. Munchausen's haywire internal logic can be maddening. Idle is quite humorous as the tired fastest man in the world. Making memorable cameos are Uma Thurman as the tempting goddess Venus and Robin Williams (credited as Ray D. Tutto) as the King of the Moon, whose head often gets away from him.

The film is a wonderful collection of eye-catching fantasy and wry humor. If you like Monty Python, you will probably like this film from Gilliam, a former member of the anarchic comedy troupe. The theme that fantasy keeps a person young is weaved wonderfully and often poetically into the various adventures of the film. What's real and what is not is left up to the viewer to decide. The film is a fun and whimsical way to spend two hours of your life.

Rick DeMott's picture

Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks