Genres

Visitors Review

CatTales 2012-05-22 06:55:13

Brilliant if overlong

Wonderful, one of the few that truly marries special effects with content.Always interesting is that Gilliam's heroes are reluctant ones, basicallyEveryman, with a social conscience that jabs them every once in a while.Theclimactic battle for the city is a bit overlong, otherwise 3 thumbs up (Igrew an extra thumb for the movie). Detractors of the film must not haveanysense of imagination, sense of humor, or sense.

2012-05-21 16:15:26

Not MY favorite of the trilogy

I seem to be definitely in the minority in these reviews, but I found THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN the worst of Terry Gilliam's trilogy (the other two films being TIME BANDITS and BRAZIL which I love). It wasn't a bad movie; just not a great one. It seemed to drag in parts. The first half hour of the film especially takes far too long to get into the story. Still, even Gilliam at his worst is often a lot more fun than most of the fantasy-based films out there.The visuals are spectacular and you can definitely see where the money went (I read that this was one of the most expensive films made at that time). Terry Gilliam has an incredible imagination and is able to translate his vision to the screen. I was convinced the Baron could fly holding a cannonball!The actors seemed to have a good time making it. John Neville uses the proper restraint in his roll to make his character believable while in unbelievable situations. Uma Thurman is incredibly beautiful as Venus. Robin Williams and Eric Idle have a lot of fun in their roles.Aside from the slow pace in parts, I also am disappointed in the lack of features on this DVD. Where's the onscreen commentary or the behind-the-scenes features? Terry Gilliam did such a great job on the TIME BANDITS and especially the Criterion Collection BRAZIL, I'm surprised that a film that he spent so much time and money into lacks these extras. Perhaps even Terry Gilliam doesn't like this film as much as his others?

juubei-2 2012-05-20 23:45:29

Wonderful Nonsense (a forgotten classic?)

A young Sarah Polly is swept on a grand storybook adventure when herfather's theater is visited by the source of its drama; the real Baronhimself (perfectly played by John Neville). The town is under siege bythe Turks and only Munchausen and his band of curious adventurers cansave it, so long as Death or a doctor doesn't catch him.Terry Gilliam, having hit his stride with the 1984-and-a-half classicBrazil, went on to fulfill his ultimate fantasy film with a great castof actors (Jonathan Price included), beautifully detailed sets andcostumes, and a very strange yarn of a tale indeed. Bit parts arefilled out by Robin Williams, the late Oliver Reed (seen most recentlyas Proximo in Gladiator) serving up a fiery Vulcan - husband to a young(not to mention stunning) Uma Thurman as Venus.A great deal of the magic that sparkled in Brazil seems to have beenrekindled here, and while it may have been panned at the time of itsrelease, time has treated it well. The effects have that pre-cg feelingthat makes me warm and fuzzy inside, and while its a little slow to getstarted, it surprises around every turn. Fans of Gilliam's work (and those who still possess that curious innerchild) will find much to enjoy here - even if it is nothing more thanwonderful nonsense.

2012-05-20 05:02:20

Ambitious Movie

By far the movie most fraught with criti-schism. This is Terry Gilliam's best picture. The ambitous layout's and great travel story lead to a truly entertaining movie for all ages.

Claudio Carvalho 2012-05-18 18:52:31

One of the Most Delightful, Non-Sense and Visually Stunning Fantasies

In the late Eighteenth Century, a European town is under siege of theTurkish army. Meanwhile, the theater company owned by Henry Salt (BillPaterson) entertains the dwellers with the production of "TheAdventures of Baron Munchausen". Out of the blue, an old man interruptsthe presentation claiming that he is Hieronymus Karl Frederick Baronvon Munchausen (John Neville) and he tells that he is the one to beblamed by the Turkish attack. The Baron Munchausen tells how he had won a bet against the Sultan(Petter Jeffrey) with the abilities of his servants Berthold (EricIdle); Adolphus (Charles McKeown}; Albrecht (Winston Dennis); andGustavus (Jack Purvis) and earned his treasure. Further, he offers tohelp the locals against the Turks and builds a balloon to seek out hismissing servants.During his journey, he finds the girl Sally (Sarah Polley) hidden inthe balloon and they travel to the moon, where they meet the derangedKing of the Moon Roger (Robin Williams) with his detachable head, andhis wife, the Queen of the Moon Ariadne (Valentina Cortese) that has acrush on the Baron. They are arrested by the jealous Roger and findBerthold in the cage, but Ariadne releases them. When they escape fromthe moon, they meet Adolphus working to Vulcan (Oliver Reed) inside avolcano. The Baron Munchausen seduces the gorgeous Vulcan's wife Venus(Uma Thurman) and the jealous god throws them in a whirlpool. They areswallowed by a monster and they meet Albrecht and Gustavus in a shipinside the monster. They escape and return to the town to help thepeople against the invaders. But they are very old and their abilitiesare gone."The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" is one of the most delightful,non- sense and visually stunning fantasies of cinema history. "TheAdventures of Baron Munchausen" is also among my favorite books of mychildhood and I first saw this film in the late 80's and then on VHS. Ihave just bought the imported DVD that surprisingly has Portuguesesubtitles and today I have seen this film again. Terry Gilliam directs with his peculiar surrealistic and ironic styleand uses magnificent special effects for a 1988 film. It is amazing torealize that twenty-three years have passed since this film wasreleased. The sweet Sarah Polley shows her talent with a greatperformance in one lead role. Uma Thurman is in the top of her eternalbeauty. Robin Williams is an unknown actor and uncredited in the roleof Roger, The King of the Moon. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "As Aventuras do Barão de Münchausen" ("The Adventuresof Baron Munchausen")

Blueghost 2012-05-18 03:28:13

Before "The Golden Compass", and before "Stardust"

And all the other fantasy market driven flicks to come out in recentyears at the time of this writing, there was Gilliam's take onMunchausen.Though the miniature effects by today's standards might seem ratherprimitive, the scope and scale of the film, combined with someexceptional and exquisite art direction and acting, create anincredible visual tapestry. Unknown to much of the audience at thetime, Gilliam's film was to be the future of movies in terms of genreand character exposition. I and an acquaintance of mine at the timewere hopeful that "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" would succeed,because then it would open the doors for other "superhero" films, andpush story telling to its limits. But, that was back in 1989, and theboom that we anticipated took some fifteen years to take off. Well, atleast our careers weren't riding on that hedge... but I digress.The other aspect of this film, as I was reminded of on the IMDb BBS, isthat the story itself is a blend of both an old Russian tale, "The Foolof the World and the Flying Ship", and Rupert Raspe's take on BaronMunchausen's tall tales. In short, without divulging facts of eithersets of fables, the Baron, as originally portrayed, was just a littletoo robust, and the Russian tale offers a chance to splinter theBaron's self aggrandizement.Some facts you won't find in the film; Baron Munchausen was a real man,and liked to "brag" about himself (to put it mildly). He actuallyfought for the Turks, being a German mercenary for hire. He claimed tohave all kinds of amazing abilities with a gentleman's character (evenhaving visited Royalty as well as the U.S. and the president in thewhite-house), but was more or less simply a soldier of fortune.Gilliam's film, in this vein, pays homage to Munchausen, real andfictional alike by playing fast and loose with the "facts" of his dualexistence. In this way it's a pleasant ride, and the sets and locationsare incredible to look at.Critiques; there's a couple of miniature shots that bug me--inparticular the ballroom dancing sequence. I'm sure it was a difficultshot to get, but some articulation of the models was really a must tosell this sequence. Using a process shot for the closeups kind of addedto the destruction of the illusion. Putting the actors on a scissor'slife, and shooting them against the actual set would've served theproduction better, and probably saved money (a must for thisproduction). Also, it's a tragedy the moon sequence, as originallyenvisioned, wasn't realized. Were left with two actors to carry thatsequence, instead of the highly populated kingdom as described in theactual tales.The new DVD is a blessing. The colors and details of the film are farricher than the original DVD release. The colors are vibrant and richin luminosity. They accentuate the late 18th century visual thrust thatthis film is attempting to deliver. On top of that the overall level ofvisual information has been enhanced from both initial DVD and VHSreleases. One can almost feel the texture of the clothes and clouds asthey scroll and undulate across the screen. A definite plus.A very fine film that predates superhero and fantasy genres by almost acouple of decades. As I stated earlier, some of the SFX may not hold,but the overall scope of the film should prove more than acounterweight to this, and give to the viewer an emotional and visualeffulgent experience.WARNING; it's not a film for everyone. As a family film it skirts theedges of PG and PG-13 territory, and the far-out nature of the film maybe a bit too existential for some adults to absorb. Still, I liked itvery much.Enjoy :-)

2012-05-17 22:04:53

Melissa's Review

This review is from: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (20th Anniversary Edition) (DVD) This movie is full of excitement and action. I recommend this for anyone who likes the unusual.

OldAle1 2012-05-17 15:39:21

Imagination triumphant

A thrilling, lively Classical-era fanfare heralds the Columbia logo andsignals high adventure and romance, as we open in "the late 18thCentury", the "Age of Reason", on a "Wednesday." Already we know thatwe are in the universe of the man behind Brazil, Terry Gilliam as theexpectation caused by the opening chords is quickly subverted by thegrim wartime feeling of a starving city under siege by the Turks. Evendeath itself makes an early appearance, a black winged skeletal angelthat will continue to show up throughout the film and which seems topresage an ominous and early end indeed for the characters we meet inthe beginning. Young Sally is the daughter of a traveling actor (andhead of his theatrical troupe) who plays the magical Baron Munchausen,a fabulous hero famed for his tall tales revolving around such feats asa trip to the moon and the theft of a sultan's treasure. The pathetictroupe puts on its poor mockery of theater in a disintegrating,cavernous building as the town's leader, the Right Ordinary HoratioJackson (note that title), only to be upstaged by the "real" Baron(John Neville), a drunken and crazy old man - with a real and sharpsword - who proceeds to tell the story of how the town got into thismess....Gilliam's film is the summation of all of his work as director up untilthis point, blending the childhood wonder of Time Bandits, the satireon bureaucracy and the feeling for the importance of imagination in theface of hopeless "rationality" of "Brazil", the broad humor of MontyPython and the references to Alice in Wonderland and medieval romanceand tall tales of "Jabberwocky". Most of the film charts in arelatively linear way the adventures of the (real) Baron and Sally asthey fly off in a balloon made of ladies' underwear in search ofMunchausen's four fabulous servants - all of whom we have glimpsed inthe opening scene, denying that they are anything but actors. Is theBaron crazy? Is the child Sally the only one who believes him, or infact the only one who can experience his exploits, or save him fromdeath? The film explores these and many other questions of storytellingand belief and the Baron grows more youthful with success, ages withfailure -- as his friends seem at first not to recognize him, and thento be too old and feeble to help him. The baron himself loses faith attimes, and only Sally is there to prop him up. At the end, amind-boggling mixture of battles, triumph, death and funeral,resurrection and above all the Story of The Way It Should End all fuseinto one of the most joyous and potent conclusions in film.Gilliam draws on a wonderful array of sources for this film, which iscertainly postmodern in the lightest yet most serious and beautifulsense - there are nods to Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz,Pinocchio, Renaissance painting, Cyrano de Bergerac and the 1940 Thiefof Bagdad among countless others, but the film never seems derivativeor obvious; always it is focused on the pure joy of the tale and thestrength and power of myth-making in the face of the tedium andjoylessness represented by the unscrupulous and ultimately murderousJackson - played with vicious glee by Jonathan Pryce in an ironicreversal of his role in Gilliam's previous film, "Brazil".The cast is uniformly fine -- some may be irritated by Polley'sadmittedly shrill Sally though it seemed an appropriate (and necessary)characterization to me -- with standouts being Pryce, Eric Idle as thefleet-footed but somewhat dimwitted Berthold, and John Neville as theBaron in one of the most unjustly slighted performances from a banneryear for film. Giuseppe Rotunno's photography makes much more of animpact on the big screen for sure but it is certainly beautiful enough(particularly in the outdoors/sky sequences) even on the DVD; andMichael Kamen's score is one of my all-time favorites and possibly thebest work in his film career. The dialog may strike some as odd, in itsmixture of late-20th-century idioms (particularly when voiced by theKing of the Moon, Robin Williams) and the more carefully "authentic"200-year-old jargon of characters like Jackson -- but like mostelements of the film, this is carefully designed to throw us off andkeep our sense of what is real and not always in doubt.This is a film I've seen over and over - it scored a big impressionwhen I saw it new, alas not on very many people - and it grows greaterwith each re-watch. Gilliam really manages here to articulate a veryprofound statement about how we are losing out way, about how thebottom line and the "rational" way of winning a war - or making a film- may in fact be heartless, cold, and ultimately more dead than theBaron seems to be just before the triumphant finish of the film.Tied for my favorite film in the toughest year for me to pick a winner,with fellow masterpieces "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The LastTemptation of Christ". Easily Gilliam's best film, and in its failureultimately a signal for a new and less potent (though stillinteresting) direction in his work. A triumph then, and a tragedy - thefilm is the career, the career is the film.

Pulse 2012-05-14 22:53:30

A fantastic adventure! Imagination required.

I first saw Adventure of Baron Munchausen in the mid-90's. It is the work of Terry Gilliam, whose imaginative movies certainly bend/twist the viewer's sense of reality. Watching this movie requires a bit of thought, beyond what is happening "on stage". Based in a time when reason & thought ruled the world of intellectual society, the Baron finds sanctuary & Life by escaping reality through the imagination of one little girl who believes in the far-fetched stories of the great Baron. The Baron travels around the world with a band of characters, each of whom possesses a 'superhuman' ability. The Baron's own ability seems to be in the 'triumph of the will', at times he is the only one who realizes a way out of certain doom by acting on the feats of the characters coupled with his own story-telling. Thus it is the Baron's Storytelling that seems to fuel the little girl's belief in him, which then allows this melodrama to continue to where it does at the end with the 'Openning of the Gates'. I love the premise of this story, that a child's belief is what shapes the world and the reality in which we live. Because if we were all intellectual stiffs, then there would be no magic in reading Alice in Wonderland, or visiting Disneyland, or in watching Baron Munchausen! This movie is one of my all-time favorites, Thank you Terry Gilliam for creating a movie outside the norm. A unique, excellent movie, you will NEVER see another movie like this one. The actors do a fantastic job - Eric Idol, John Neville, Uma Thurman, and Robin Williams are all great in this movie. This was the first movie I saw with Uma Thurman, she plays Venus, wife of mercury, who Baron puts the moves on. Hillarious. The scene where Uma reacts to being called a Flusie is most memorable. I highly highly recommend this movie to anyone with the slightest imagination. Like all Terry Gilliam movies, it requires some good thought and reflection to appreciate. I've done quite a bit of reflection on this movie over the years, and even wrote a college term paper on the way the individual's subjective reality may challenge the objective logical perception of others. As I wrote in the paper 10 years ago:In “being”, we thus write the story; but by believing we are given control of the script.

erics-4 2012-05-14 07:20:34

An ambiguous predecessor

No one has mentioned that this is a re-make of a German film. In fact, asdescribed byCinematheque Ontario, the original was the only big-budget non-propagandafilm made inGermany during the Second World War. Presumably the Nazi regime thought itwouldpromote visions of Nordic superiority. Cinematheque showed the original,which I recallas a lavish production without a clear political message.Terry Gilliam's version is also marvellous; I especially liked it as achildren's film thatappeals to the imagination rather than to technology or brute strength.However, thedark undertones of its predecessor may not be entirely absent. Thepresentation of Turksleaves me unsettled -- could its stereotypes have beenavoided?

2012-05-13 13:58:27

It's a grand adventure!

This review is from: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (20th Anniversary Edition) (DVD) This movie was a favorite of mine when I was young. Now it's a favorite of my children as well.

Boris Todorov 2012-05-13 12:38:25

Munchausen's tale as he himself would have seen it

This is NOT a movie for everyone. This is not a movie for people whowant a fantasy plot... according to the rules of fantasy movies. Thisis a movie which has one great ambition and has ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY,UTTERLY, FULLY, UNQUESTIONABLY fulfilled: to present the story of BaronMunchausen as the real one would have seen it. This is a great piece ofvisualization of the culture of 18th-century Enlightenment (did younotice that the bad guys all wore uniforms from the Napoleonic age - asa sign of when this great period of human cultural achievementfinished?). It is a movie in which the sets and costumes are THEESSENCE - the mechanical giant fish, Venus getting out of the pearl,the small amours with the pink garlands, the pinkish clouds, thetwo-dimensional buildings on the Moon, the separation of the head fromthe body, the exoticising of the "Grand Turk" - these are all correctreproductions of both the imagery from, and the topics relevant for,the Baroque period. IT IS success.

2012-05-10 14:50:03

A good time funny movie for all ages

This review is from: Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Amazon Instant Video) This is a good time, funny movie with an all star cast. Sometimes a bit hard to follow the Barons wild web he weaves. Well worth the watch no matter your age.

2012-05-09 20:24:34

Darn Good Movie

check it out. a great fantasy tale.

James Hitchcock 2012-05-09 19:59:37

The Age of Unreason

`The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' is based upon the story of aneighteenth-century German nobleman who won himself a reputation as theworld's greatest liar, constantly inventing tall tales of his exploits,eachmore incredible than the last. The film is set against the background of amythical war between the Sultan of Turkey and a republican Mediterraneancity-state, a sort of English-speaking Dubrovnik, and relates Munchausen'sfantastic adventures while trying to lift the siege of the city.The film was, of course, directed by Terry Gilliam of `Monty Python' fame,and the influence of that series is obvious. Like two of the Python films,`Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and `Life of Brian', it consists of anumber of sketches strung together to form a loosely-connected narrative,set against a historical background. An even closer comparison, however,might be with Gilliam's Python animations, as the film relies less onverbalwit than either `Holy Grail' or `Brian' and more on surrealism and visualinventiveness. The plot is very loose and episodic, with each sketchdepicting one of the many adventures of Munchausen and his four trustyservants, each of whom has a miraculous power, such as the ability to runfrom Constantinople to Vienna in an hour or the ability to shoot an applefrom a tree several hundred miles away. In the course of their adventuresthe five friends, accompanied by Sally, a young girl who has befriendedtheBaron, fly to the moon and meet its king and queen, descend into a volcanoand are swallowed by a huge fish.Although the exact geographical location of the city is unclear, itslocation in time is made clear from the beginning:- `The 18th century. TheAge of Reason. Wednesday'. This points us to what is to be the film'smajortheme- the contrast between reason on the one hand and the imagination onthe other. Although the Turks are the enemy, the real villain of the filmisnot is the Sultan but rather the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson, a highofficial in the government of the city who represents the unimaginative,overly rational attitude to life and who has no time for Munchausen, whorepresents the power of dreams and the imagination.Tim Burton's recent film `Big Fish', which can be seen as a modern slantonthe Munchausen story, also deals with this theme- the importance of theimagination, personified by a teller of tall tales, in a rationalistic,literal-minded world. Gilliam's film and Burton's are both highly visuallyimaginative, but in my view Burton's is the better of the two. The reasonisthat `Munchausen' is uneven in quality; parts of it are brilliant, butothers tend to drag. The `King of the Moon' scenes are perhaps the bestexample of this. Robin Williams is often described as a great comic actor,but I normally find him at his best when his comic talents are used in thecontext of a predominantly serious film, such as `Good Morning Vietnam',`Dead Poet's Society' or `Patch Adams'. (The excellent `Mrs Doubtfire' maybe considered an exception, but even here the film, amidst the laughter,hadsome serious points to make). When he acts in a pure comedy, such as `ClubParadise' or `The Birdcage' he can be more self-indulgent and lessdisciplined, and his rather tedious performance in `Munchausen' was a goodexample of this.This unevenness is one of the risks of making a film with an episodicstructure; such films can often be hit-and-miss affairs. Nevertheless,although "Munchausen" has its misses, it also has its hits. Jonathan Prycemakes a highly effective villain as the soulless bureaucrat Jackson. JohnNeville as Munchausen is an equally effective hero. Neville had had fewmajor film roles before this one, made when he was in his sixties.(Munchausen and his servants are all presented as elderly and worried thattheir powers might be in decline). Particularly touching is his closefriendship with young Sally, recalling a grandfather-granddaughterrelationship. Imagination in this film is the faculty of the old and thevery young- rationalism is the credo of the middle-aged Jackson-exemplifying the dictum that every generation rebels against its parentsandmakes common cause with its grandparents.The original Baron Munchausen appears to have been a real character, whosesupposed adventures were fictionalised (and no doubt exaggerated evenfurther) by a writer named Rudolf Erich Raspe. (The eighteenth century wasclearly not an age purely given over to reason, and surrealism evidentlyexisted long before Andre Breton and Salvador Dali). Enough of the surreallunacy of those tales (balloons made of women's underwear, a mantravellingon a cannonball) has survived into the film to make it watchable, despiteits weaknesses. 6/10.

dr_forbush 2012-05-08 20:55:06

Great Surprise

My kids, who are great Monty Python fans found this movie at thelibrary. Thinking that I knew about all the successful Monty Pythonrelated movies I figured that this movie must have been a sleeper. Iwas greatly surprised by the movie.In my opinion this movie was much better than Time Bandits. TimeBandits was weak mainly because of the weak (or non-existent) ending.This movie had a much better conclusion. Plus, this movie also had avery strong thread running through the movie, without hitting you overthe head with it.I also enjoyed the literary references and Robin Williams as the kingof the Moon. My favorite reference was when Venus came out of the giantclam. It reminded me of Kilgore Trout's "Venus on the Half Shell."(Kurt Vonegut). That was a very nice touch.

Michael Neumann 2012-05-06 03:43:03

too much of a good thing?

Director Terry Gilliam found an obvious kindred spirit in KarlFriedrich Hieronymous, Freiherr von Munchausen, who in an early scenehere is told by a voice of reason (while preparing another elaborateexit, this time in a homemade dirigible): "You won't get far on hot airand fantasy!" Both the ex-Monty Python animator and the fabulous late18th century raconteur inhabit a world where reason and logic arehandicaps, and where tall tales can transport you anywhere, from AsiaMinor to the far side of the Moon. The Baron's adventures don't amountto much more than an ongoing effort to reassemble his scattered band ofmerry men (each with his own superlative talent: the fastest, the mostaccurate eyesight, and so forth) to help rescue a nameless citybesieged by Turkish soldiers. But Gilliam is one filmmaker able to workwonders with hot air, fantasy, and of course a 46-million dollar budget- small change by today's blockbuster standards but at the time makingit one of the more expensive movies ever made. It might almost be toomuch of a good thing: the frantic pace all but challenges audiences toabsorb so many macabre and outlandish details, but repeated viewingswould only underline the lack of substance behind the visionary style.

2012-05-05 18:12:10

Definately worth watching

The movie is a bit strange, but worth seeing. Very entertaining, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen are decidedly on a scale with the Neverending Story.

soranno 2012-05-04 16:34:51

Kinda like an episode of "Monty Python" without the laughs

"Monty Python" troupe veterans Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam team up againforan epic comedy adventure, one of many screen versions, about the eccentricBaron Munchausen. This 1989 Columbia Pictures version presents a fine cast(including an amusing cameo by Robin Williams) but little else in the wayofbeing a fully enjoyable film.

2012-05-04 02:06:52

Hot air and fantasy

You know you're watching a Terry Gilliam movie when:...a horse bursts unexpectedly over the camera....a bald giant has the strength to lift a boat (or boats)....a midget saves (or ruins) the day....a Monty Python crony appears for comic relief....everyone speaks in near-unintelligible British accents....an innocent child believes in the power of adventure.These elements, put to good use in Gilliam's "Time Bandits" (my first encounter as a child with anything related to Python) show up again here. While both movies take place in wildly imaginative fantasy worlds, "Baron" does not have any of the dark elements that tempered the Bandits' adventures. Not to worry, for its overloaded with a grand sense of fun.You see, the world is danger. Not from the Turks, who provide the film with its fair share of loud explosions, but from the impending age of science and reason. Enter Baron Von Munchausen (John Neville), whose tall tales stretch the limits of one's imagination. He is the designated saviour, and along with young Sally (the previously mentioned innocent child), he sets out to save the world. Neville has some serious fun as the (deluded?) Baron. He is a man touched by magic, and he's going to have a good time using it till the bitter end. Sarah Polley gives a clinic on how to be the precocious child. She's first sensible, and then cute, rather than the other way around which most child actors favour. Add to that the fact that she's a Canadian (Yay!) affecting a serviceable Brit accent, and you marvel that she was only ten at the time. Eric Idle and Robin Williams also show up for the fun. The former is given ludicrous powers (he runs really fast) and less than stellar dialogue that nearly wastes his talents. The latter turns in one of his typical 1980s performances, chewing up so much scenery and (seemingly) improvising his way through his brief role that all the other actors can do is stand back and watch. His King of the Moon is entertaining, yes, but it stops the story short, to the point where the movie may have been better off without him in it.The story, such as it were, is little more than a series of adventures (duh... the title tells us that), delicately linked together by the Baron's desire to find his old servants. It functions as little more than an excuse for Gilliam's wonderful set pieces (my favourite being Uma Thurman rising from the half-shell in a stunning recreation of Botticelli's `Birth of Venus'). As Jonathan Pryce's character says at one point, "He won't get far on hot air and fantasy." True enough, I'd say. But he'll have a grand time trying.