The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The tall tales of the legendary 18th-century Baron Munchausen would seem perfect subject matter for Gilliam's fertile imagination; indeed, despite production problems, the film is an engaging and dottily fantastic spectacular. The Baron (Neville) and his superhuman colleagues are rather colourless creations, but the characters they encounter during their odyssey - mafioso-like King of the Moon (Williams), love-lorn Vulcan (Reed) - are vivid and funny. Still more bizarre is the look of the film: an island transformed into a monstrous fish, a balloon sewn from underwear sailing over a war-torn city, a ship rippling through a desert strewn with statuary. But this third part of Gilliam's trilogy, about 'the triumph of imagination over rationality' and lighter in tone than Brazil, hardly warrants serious analysis. More of its budget should have been spent on the script - there are jarring leaps in the narrative - but it's good, intelligent fun, and occasionally truly surprising.