The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)

If you've ever seen any of Terry Gilliam's films your quite aware that they're usually very visually stimulating and extremely bizarre, and when Gilliam dabbles in comedy it's usually a very odd type of humor enjoyed by those with a taste for it. Therefore it was really no surprise that The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a grand visual production that's only going to truly appeal to the hardcore Gilliam fans or lovers of the extremely strange.

A character of European myth, much like America's mythical Paul Bunyan, Baron Munchausen is a famed character who traveled the world on wild adventures with his gang of abnormal cohorts. Many years later the adventures of Munchausen have been dissolved by the sands of time and are now thought of as nothing but silly fantasies created by the mind. But the residents of a small war torn village are in for one big surprise as they never expected the legends to all be true, that is not until Baron Munchausen himself arrives to end a war he claims to have began so many decades ago. But as an old man what match is Munchausen against the invading Turk army? It's all a magical, twisted and sometimes confusing adventure as Munchausen literally goes to the moon and back to reunite with his old friends in an attempt to save a village and once again revive the stories of his adventures that have since been distorted and made a mockery of.

I've only seen a handful of Gilliam film's none of which I've enjoyed very much, except for Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail which is a true comedic classic. Unfortunately the bizarre humor which makes that film great is not present in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in fact I rarely laughed at all during this rather strange adventure. The highpoint of all of Gilliam's films is by far the visual sets, costumes and characters, I could only imagine what one of his films would be like if the stories were as great as the visuals. But the story is average to begin with and will manage to entertain the average viewer for a time out of pure curiosity, but soon the film becomes so utterly strange and uninteresting that most people will surely become bored as I eventually did. Overall, the imagination is great, the visuals entertaining and Uma Thurman is smoking hot, but the story failed excite me, some of the characters (especially Robin Williams) are quite annoying, and the comedy never landed with me.

4/10