The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
film — UK — 1988

7.5
Terry Gilliam certainly takes his time in directing films. In thirty years that he`s been in the business he has directed just 11 films, with two out of those being Monty Python films, while the two most recent films came out just last year. I am now actually pretty close to having seen all of his works - only "Tideland" (the latest film that hasn`t been actually released yet) and "Twelve monkeys" remain on my "to see" list, so I guess I can call myself pretty comprehensively educated in Terry Gilliam`s filmmaking. I had quite a lot of trouble getting this film in question, for it isn`t particulary popular and the first version of it I got was in Russian. Then I said to myself - who on earth would want to watch a Terry Gilliam film in some crappy translation? Not me, for sure. So I deleted it and completely forgot about this. But now, almost a year after my last unsuccessful attempt to watch it I managed to get this film once again, and this time in much better quality. Alas, I was hugely dissapointed when I found out that this version of the film was in fact... in French. Damn! Anyhow I decided to watch it even in French, for I doubted that I ever would find an English version. But some ten minutes into the film I thought to myself - why don`t I check whether the film doesn`t have a second audio track. And it did have a separate audio track in English indeed. And there was much rejoicing. So now I`ve seen "Baron Munchausen" in English. What is this film about? It`s about Munchausen, of course - the fool who tells his stories about strange adventures he has had. Now he`s old and wrinkled and his companions are just like him, but his heart is still young and still burning and he`s still capable of great deeds. And the world`s fastest man, Bernard, is played by Eric Idle. That`s positive. The film isn`t just funny, just like any Gilliam comedy it leaves you with questions and who cares that this is supposed to be a film for the entire family. In fact it`s quite similar to some other Gilliam`s works - most notably "Jabberwocky", "Time bandits" and "The Brothers Grimm". I can`t say that it`s the absolutely best film of his career, but it`s good enough for me.
2006-04-06
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