I'm in the final stretch of my Terry Gilliam marathon! Three more to
go! (Or four, depending on how I feel about watching Brothers Grimm
again)
I started with:
Oh, Time Bandits! You know, it's that one with the troupe of
midget (little people? What's the proper word these days?) thieves with
the little boy. They go through time and meet Napoleon and Robin Hood.
I love the Robin Hood part. "But then, they haven't got two pennies to
rub together. Because they're poor!" Classic, very Monty Python-esque.
The little boy actor is kind of annoying. Not such a charming little
fella. I love Randall though, and the Evil Genius guy.
Then on to:
I've never come across this movie before but I've heard that
it's pretty classic Terry Gilliam, so expectations were high. It's
interesting but not my new favorite. The guy who plays the Frenchy bad
guy in Adventures of Baron Munchausen and also Keira Knightly's dad in
Pirates of the Caribbean is the lead. Even though he's great, I found
it kind of hard to buy him as this head-in-the-clouds innocent. But
Gilliam here creates an interesting vision of the future. Mona from
Who's the Boss plays the main guy's mother and she's obsessed with
plastic surgery and wining and dining with high society. Robert DeNiro
is excellent, of course, as a mysterious heat engineer/terrorist who is
working against this highly controlled/bureaucratic society. The
ending's a little sad, but not surprising given what is to come in the
Terry Gilliam repertoire.
With much glee:
I've owned this movie for a long
time and I think it will remain one of my favorites. Baron Munchausen
is such a fantastic character, a gallant, red-haired, Don Juan-y kind
of guy. And he's got his band of misfit/superheroes: the fastest man
alive, the strongest man alive, a guy who can see really far, and a guy
who can hear really far. On his journeys he meets Robin Williams as the
man on the moon and Uma Thurman as Venus. All the while cheating death
time and time again. Now that I've read Don Quixote I can definitely
see shades of it in this. Seeing that Terry Gilliam later tried to
adapt the story to film (unsuccessfully, too bad) I'm sure he was
influenced by that book.
And finally, at least, so far:
I was certain upon finishing this that it was not written by Terry
Gilliam and I'm right. It's a different film for him. It doesn't have
the heavy fantasy element, for one. It's kind of great that searching
for the holy grail is a theme though. Like, shout out to my peeps! But
it's not a minor theme, in fact it's very integral to the story. I
found Robin Williams kind of cute in this flick. He hammed it up just
where he needed to and not beyond and wore the twinkly, contemplative
look just where he needed to. Jeff Bridges makes me think of the DJ guy
in Northern Exposure in this one. They do kind of look alike. Oh, and
Tom Waits plays a beggar!