The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , for better or worse, is one of those films that became more famous for what happened off screen than on. At the time it opened, the film was a major disaster — infamous in Hollywood for going way over budget, and contributing greatly to Terry Gilliam's reputation, deserved or not, as a hard to control auteur.
In fact, it was said at the time that Baron Munchausen was the reason Gilliam's planned adaptation of Watchmen had the plug pulled, as the studios became nervous about giving the Monty Python vet an even bigger scale film. Looking back now on the film itself, Baron Munchausen is a flawed but ultimately worthwhile endeavor — an appropriately bigger than life and fantastical interpretation of the stories about the folk hero title character. However, the performance is interrupted by an old man John Neville , claiming to be the Baron himself, who insists on explaining what really happened.
When this apparently genuine Munchausen leaves -- in a very unusual balloon -- Sally stows away, joining him on a series of adventures, as he begins to reunite with his old allies.
Munchausen's adventures are hardly mundane. They include a trip to the moon, and an encounter with the giant head sometimes attached to his body, sometimes not of the moon's king Robin Williams, in an extended cameo ; a meeting with the god Vulcan Oliver Reed and his incredibly beautiful wife Venus Uma Thurman, 17 years old at the time, and appropriately stunning ; and more than one encounter with a Sultan Peter Jeffery who's currently attacking the city Sally lives in as the movie begins.
Seeing the film for the first time as a 12 year old, I didn't realize that Thurman is among the many cast members who are part of the theater company at the beginning, and then reappear in very different visages along the way. While not of the high caliber of Gilliam's best and most assured work, there's still a lot to like about this film. The great John Neville and Sarah Polley the latter only 9 years old at the time give very strong performances as the unlikely duo at the center of the story, with Neville perfectly embodying the Baron's devil may care attitude, and Polley showing the same wisdom and wise beyond her years demeanor that has served her well throughout her career.
Gilliam's visual prowess is served well by the film co-written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown , as Munchausen and Sally travel from one unique landscape to the next. There's some wonderful set pieces here, such as the sequence in which Munchausen, Sally and their friend Berthold Eric Idle climb up the moon, which of course is actually shaped like a crescent; tie a rope around the point at the top; and climb down through the moving constellations.
Gilliam's Monty Python roots are perhaps more on display in this movie then in any other he's done since that group broke up — the gallows humor in the film includes an organ whose "music" is caused by spears and other torture devices that poke and prod people caged inside; plus many people are cartoonishly decapitated before the film ends.
Still, the film is one that most children can enjoy, because it all retains that fantastical "don't worry, this isn't real" fairy tale approach, through scenes both dark and light. The story is certainly a hodge-podge, comprising set pieces that don't really work together as a strong narrative whole.
And it's hard not to note that the film loses a considerable amount of energy in its last act — the climactic battle near the end of the movie is not nearly as engaging as the more unique scenes that precede it.
Overall though, this is a fun and charming film — its episodic nature makes it a DVD easy to pop in for a scene or two, to enjoy a favorite scene for yourself or to introduce a notable sequence to a friend, explaining "Hey, you should see this scene on the moon" or, "Hey, you should see Uma Thurman almost completely naked.
The video presentation on this new DVD seems like a missed opportunity though. The widescreen transfer is semi-decent, but it has a notable amount of grain and in some scenes looks a bit muddy. Baron Munchausen is a 20 year old film, but we've seen movies from the same era or older look better on DVD.
However, it's hard not to wonder if perhaps some of elements of the original negative were in especially bad shape — considering how the studio treated the movie when it was released more on that below , it wouldn't be surprising. Dialogue, music and sound effects are balanced well. Score: 8 out of 10 Packaging and Extras This is the second DVD of this film, following a bare bones version several years ago.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen not only went notoriously over budget, but was essentially abandoned by Columbia when it was originally released, playing in little more than theaters across the country.
The three part documentary The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen is terrific. It features new interviews with almost every notable participant from the film, including Terry Gilliam, John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Robin Williams and many, many more — Thurman is one of the only notable absences. This documentary is about as candid as you get. Whether you like the film or not, the story of how it got made and almost didn't get made is fascinating.
Miscalculations on what sets would be needed; a rare horse sickness; costumes stuck in transit — there's one major problem after another documented via the stories told here, all of which added up to an unhappy time for almost everyone involved.
A fascinating and polarizing figure in the documentary is Thomas Schuhly, the German producer of Munchausen. Many go on record, including Gilliam, saying far less than favorable things about the man, who essentially is described as a con artist and someone who made a lot of promises he couldn't keep.
Schuhly himself though is also interviewed, giving his own perspective on what happened and how he felt everyone was "running around like hysterical women" when the film began to get into trouble. For a cast and crew saddled with a spiraling budget, endless bad luck, and a sinister German producer who comes off like a cross between Otto Preminger and Uwe Boll, making Munchausen was an experience to be survived rather than savored. All the madness, drama, and waste did pay off creatively, though not financially: Munchausen cost and lost a fortune.
But in the hackneyed parlance of show-biz, every dollar is up on the screen in an exquisite cavalcade of wildly imaginative setpieces dreamed up by Gilliam and production designer Dante Ferretti, who picked up the first of eight Oscar nominations for the film. A massive flop turned cult favorite, Munchausen casts British stage actor John Neville as a legendary tale-spinner who joins forces with precocious moppet Polley and reunites with his trusted band of adventurers to save a city from Turkish invaders.
Neville's preposterous quest sends him spinning through fantastic worlds, from a lunar wonderland ruled by the disembodied head of Robin Williams to the insides of a sea creature to the subterranean lair of the Roman God Vulcan Oliver Reed. Munchausen presents its fantasist hero as a glorious anachronism, a proponent of wonder in an age of reason and rationality. In that respect, he mirrors Gilliam's gloriously old-fashioned cinematic fantasia, which boasts a retro charm and craftsmanship unthinkable in our CGI-addled era.
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