Word: gilliams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Screenplay by Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam...
...since Heaven's Gate! The $40 million pratfall! The project that put Columbia Pictures in the commode! Even Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchhausen, the 18th century adventurer and fabulist on whose alleged exploits this film is based, might pause before telling such tales of artistic profligacy. But Terry Gilliam has the wounds to prove...
...Gilliam, who learned from his days with Monty Python to be truculent and never truckle, had earlier fought Universal Pictures when it was reluctant to release his film Brazil -- a masterpiece at a mere $15 million. This time he would run up a higher tab -- say, $17 million to $20 million over budget -- and into bigger trouble. David Puttnam, Munchausen's Hollywood sponsor, soon departed as boss of Columbia. Film Finances Inc., which stepped in to supervise the picture, threatened to fire Gilliam if he didn't scale back on the spiraling costs. A producer sued Columbia, claiming that five...
...Gilliam's picture worth all the fuss? Sure, because he has tapped the cinema's capacity for lying with a straight face. If you can create a vision onscreen, then it's true. At the start, Baron Munchausen (John Neville) strides onstage to recount his hoodwinking of a sulky Sultan (Peter Jeffrey), his dalliance with the Queen of the Moon (Valentina Cortese), his flirtation with the goddess Venus (Uma Thurman), his captivity inside a giant fish, and his long-odds battle with the Turkish army. Except for young Sally (Sarah Polley), his listeners don't know if he's telling...
...episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents. Starlight spangles a lunar beach as the baron's ship drifts ashore for his interview with an Italianate creature (Robin Williams, unbilled and hilarious) who identifies himself as "the King of Everything -- Rei di Tutto. But you may call me Ray." The king's body is detachable from his head, which provokes schizophrenia of celestial proportions...