The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
An account of Baron Munchausen's supposed travels and fantastical experiences with his band of misfits.
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What critics compared The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to
For a movie with such audacious, lush, and inventive images (and, yes, production backstory), the story and themes of The Fall bring to mind a whole lot of other audacious, inventive films, including several by Terry Gilliam (particularly The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the little-seen, mostly-reviled Tideland ), and even a couple of recent ones about the transformative power of storytelling and mythmaking ( Be Kind Rewind and Son of Rambow ).
So The Fall encourages thematic comparisons with del Toro 's Pan's Labyrinth and especially Terry Gilliam 's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Tideland .
For a more interesting failure along near-identical lines, check out The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , which, even with a young Sarah Polley, at least has energy and lucidity.
While "The Fall" might not be everyone's cup of tea due to the eccentric way it blends epic fantasy with brooding reality, the scope of Tarsem's imagination and vision and the delightful pairing of Pace and Untaru creates an eclectic fantasy tale unlike anything we've since Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."
Gung ho Sergeant Nick Angel (Pegg) is a London super-Bobby exiled to a bucolic hamlet when his heroics begin to show up his peers--a possible reference to the fate of Sting's perfect soldier in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
If I had to compare Stardust to something, it would be Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).
His credits include Scorsese's " The Age of Innocence " and Gilliam's " The Adventures of Baron Munchausen ," and here he combines the elegance of the former and the fantastic images of the latter into a vampire world of eerie beauty.
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I am no box-office prognosticator so I cannot really offer any guesses towards its potential financial success except to note that even it does fail to make it in a crammed marketplace, that would only mean that it would join the company of such august companions as "The Wizard of Oz," "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T," "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "Babe: Pig in the City" as family films that failed to make much of an impact during their initial release but would later go on to become beloved classics.
Spider shrinks from Mrs. Wilkinson's stern ministrations and listens with admiring befuddlement to fellow outpatient Terrence's (John Neville, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen") odd but apt adages ('The more the clothes, the less the man,' Terrance observes when Mrs. W. discovers Spider wearing multiple shirts).
By managing to turn a Disney theme park ride into a major movie franchise, director Gore Verbinski and his collaborators, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, have managed to do an unintentional remake of Gilliam's “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.”
I’m most privy to praise his masterwork “Brazil” or surrealist, self-referential comedy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”; others love “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” or “The Fisher King.”
But at his best, in "Brazil," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," or "Twelve Monkeys," the imaginative flights and detours are absorbing enough to sustain interest.
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As I get older, I appreciate Gilliam's library less (three exceptions: Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tideland ); even the seemingly unshakeable Brazil now seems cluttered, unfocused, self-indulgent, and puerile.
The whole affair hammered a nail into the foot of Gilliam's directing career, and despite subsequent successes such as The Fisher King (1991) and Twelve Monkeys (1995), the over-publicized Munchausen experience was so traumatizing that it bronzed Gilliam's reputation for being "difficult."
Like Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," "12 Monkeys" doesn't look much like other movies, which in this era of copycat filmmaking is certainly a blessing.
Director Terry Gilliam was the American member of the British comedy sensation Monty Python and went on to direct the movies Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King.
His style is best described as antique-futuristic (perhaps one reason that his weakest film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, fell flat; it was just antique).
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was released in 1988, millions of dollars over budget, to a less than satisfactory box office return.
Directed by Terry Gilliam (Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) from an original script by newcomer Richard LaGravenese, this enormously entertaining and wonderfully acted but compromised New Age comedy spectacular represents Gilliam's bid to prove his commercial mettle, and the results are simultaneously highly personal and extremely corrupt—a shameless attempt to “give the public what it wants” that is shot full of brilliance.
By 1988’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, however, his much-publicized clashes with studios and production misfortunes caught up with him.
For the part of Parry, Jack’s homeless savior, the studio wanted Robin Williams, who’d worked with Gilliam before on The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen.
But it ties in with his mythical obsessions, from "The Time Bandits" to "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."
It's interesting to me that Gilliam is paired with Robin Williams here (and once more in the infuriating The Fisher King), because if there's anything that two people in desperate need of leashes don't need it's their doppelgänger looking at them over a camera.