Back in 1989 "The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen" was a $46 million production that totally bombed at the box office, making back only $8 million of its initial costs.Well - Watching this elaborately staged comedy/adventure/fantasy film today (30 years later) - I really can't understand why it was such a dismal failure back then.Directed by Terry Gilliam (in the Monty Python's style) - I found that this story about an 18th century German nobleman and adventurer (who was the greatest liar in the world) to be quite a visual treat with its many surreal, weird, and bizarre images and characters.Yes. At times its story was clearly teetering on the ridiculous - But - Considering that this is a pre-CGI presentation - I, personally, recommend it to anyone who likes to watch some over-the-top cinematic eccentricity once in a while.

The tallest of the Tall Tales, which is all true - they have the film to prove it! Absolutely fantastic blend of adventure, fantasy and comedy. The fantastic art style and practical effects used to bring this movie alive, make it look and feel truly special. Features a plethora of imaginative and memorable locations and characters, from the charismatic Baron himself(who is like an older version of Jack Sparrow) to King of the Moon and from.. well the Moon to the Vulcan's forge.. it's the most magnificently weird and fantastically quirky odyssey ever put to screen. See it, you will not regret it!

It's "The Age of Reason". An unnamed city is under bombardment by the Turkish army. The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson (Jonathan Pryce) is an absolute man devoted to reason and executes an overly brave soldier. A touring company is acting out the fanciful life of Baron Munchausen. An old man (John Neville) claiming to be the real Munchausen disrupts the play. He continues by recounting how he's the cause of the war. He challenged the Sultan and sent super fast Berthold (Eric Idle) to fetch a bottle of wine from Vienna. With Adolphus the rifleman, strong breath and hearing Gustavus, and strongman Albrecht, they win the bet and carry off with the Ottoman's treasury. The playhouse is bombarded. Young Sally Salt (Sarah Polley) attends to the old man and together they go on further crazy adventures.Director Terry Gilliam lets loose his insanity onto the screen. The style is over the top in the wonderful Gilliam way. It's bombastic with lots of bombs. The characters are beyond crazy. In one of the wackier turns, Robin Williams is The King of the Moon. I am conflicted. The beauty of the movie is its wild uncontrolled fantasy. Yet I do wish the movie has more control and maybe some simplification. There is no other movie quite like it.

A movie that shows in no uncertain terms why Gilliam always did the visually interesting animations at Python, but stayed out of the writing process.Hats off to Gilliam for managing to create a visually stunning movie in the LATE 80s – a period notorious not only for awful movies (there are almost no gems from 1987-1989, from Hollywood at least), but also very ugly-looking films. It's as though every cinematographer and director from that period had been so continually high on cocaine and crack that they decided that ugliness was the new prettiness. Take a look at almost any movie from that period and then tell me it isn't far uglier than the visual standards from before it or after it.BM looks so good that a true visual fetishist such as I can enjoy the movie despite its mostly appalling and embarrassing attempts at humour. Gilliam comes from the Italian-French school of "comedy" in which a banana peel lying in wait for a foot still represents the "height" of genius and innovation. In other words, the Comedic School of Cheesy Buffoonery. Idle, the poor sap, got most of the worst lines; he must have suffered greatly having to learn and then deliver such trifles in front of a 100+ strong crew, not to mention the millions who watched him do it later on the screen. I very much doubt that spontaneous on-set laughter was a problem for Gilliam during the film's shooting; perhaps "embarrassing silence" might have been more accurate.Still, there are a few very funny moments – a handful only, admittedly – that spring out of nowhere, and by "nowhere" I mean the dry laugh-less desert that Gilliam's weak dialogue provides, which is why every good gag comes almost as a shock. For example, Pryce's suggestion to the Turkish sultan that they should surrender because "we surrendered the last time, so it's your turn". Also, Pryce's comment that France is out of virgins – after the sultan asks for some.Which brings me to the mystery of who Gilliam intended this movie for: kids or adults? On the one hand there are just so many dumb and vapid visual gags and pathetic one-liners that only truly un-gifted kids can enjoy; on the other hand we have Robin Williams talking about orgasms and Pryce mentioning virgins. Perhaps the humour was intended for dumb adults?All of Gilliam's comedies (except "Time Bandits") have a serious humour problem, because of his penchant for corny sight gags and incredibly childish quips. But the performances suffer too; Oliver Reed was never cut out for comedy, yet what chance did he have while under the guidance of Gilliam's clumsy direction (I'm talking about directing actors, not creating amazing action sequences and the like, in which Gilliam excels sometimes).The movie is up-and-down. The theater sequences look amazing but are dull content-wise. The Moon segment is fun, the volcano segment dull, and so on.TAOBM is from the part of Gilliam's career when he was still trying to come to terms with basic film-making concepts such as "staying on budget" and "curbing the zealous perfectionism in order to appease the producers and financiers". This was a good thing for the viewer, because this time-consuming and money-wasting approach results in visually striking movies, but bad for Gilliam who easily could have had his career cut short with behind-the-scenes disasters that followed "Brazil" and TAOBM every step of the way, during and after shooting. Not that it would have mattered had his career been over after this film; it was all downhill from here. "Fisher King" is an overly sentimental overrated oddity, "12 Monkeys" is visually modest and has logic holes as big as Robert Redford's empty pumpkin-head, "Fear & Loathing" is an abominable embarrassment and one of the dullest movies ever made, "The Brothers Grimm" has Matt Damon in it hence ruined, and "Tideland" is even more boring than Depp and del Toro horsing around in Vegas, not to mention utterly stupid. Only "Imaginarium" succeeded in repeating some of that visual quality he became renowned for, plus a half-decent story.I'd always wondered how such an average actress (and average-looking one as well) as Sarah Polley made it in movies. Now I know why; Gilliam hired HER (of all the thousands of possible girls) for this role. Did he think those teeth are funny? I wasn't laughing – and was laughing even less (i.e. laughing less than not laughing at all, which I know might not make sense) when watching Sarah with her even worse adult teeth in later movies. I don't like fake, glittering, white-as-a-wall Hollywood dentures, but couldn't she have gone to the dentist once?I do have to also wonder about that very strange line that the Baron throws at Sarah: "… otherwise I will knock you up!" Knock her up? Is this a clandestine message of pro-pedophilic support that Gilliam is sending to all the child-molesting perverts out there? Sarah is only 8 or 9 in this movie, and I am convinced Gilliam knew what he was doing when choosing the phrase "to knock up" instead of a plethora of other – non-sexual-innuendo – phrases that he could have chosen instead. Perhaps my suspicion would not have been aroused had Gilliam not been such a STAUNCH defender of Roman Polanski's "rights" a few years back when the matter of his extradition to the States was all over the media. But that's Gilly for ya; a flaming amoral Marxist, and proud of it.