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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - A 3 Mins Read

    Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The (1988)

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    After making the wonderful Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985), former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam made this epic 126-minute fantasy which cost around $50 million to produce. It ended up losing a lot of money but is incredible to look at and made with impressive detail.

    The film begins when the baron indignantly interrupts a play that is allegedly based on his life and continues as he tells the “real” story of his travels – which took him not merely to Turkey but also to the moon, to the heart of a volcano, and into the stomach of a sea monster so big that people actually lived there quite comfortably, once they had been swallowed.

    John Neville plays the fabled 18th-century adventurer and liar who goes backwards and forwards in time with a ten-year-old girl called Sally (Sarah Polley) and has a select group of followers with superpowers – such as the world’s strongest man, the man with the best hearing in the world, and another friend who does not have great eyesight but owns glasses that allow him to see almost any distance.

    Oliver Reed is great as Vulcan, king of the underworld, with a new ICBM missile.

    The film also stars Eric Idle, Brazil star Jonathan Pryce, Uma Thurman as Venus (pictured above right) in her first film acting job, Sting (who was Gilliam’s real-life neighbour at the time), an uncredited (and unpaid) Robin Williams as King of the moon – with a detachable head that is able to spin off into the night on its own (pictured below) – and Jack Purvis (from Time Bandits).

    The special effects are astonishing, but so is the humour with which they are employed. It is not enough that one of the baron’s friends is the fastest runner in the world. He must run all the way to Spain and back in an hour, to fetch a bottle of wine and save the baron’s neck. And he must be able to outrun a speeding bullet, stop it, and redirect it back toward the man who fired it.

    Gilliam claimed it was the third part of a trilogy, with Time Bandits being about childhood, Brazil being about adulthood, and Baron Munchausen being about old age.

    Hieronymus Karl Frederick Baron von Munchausen
    John Neville
    Desmond/Berthold
    Eric Idle
    Sally Salt
    Sarah Polley
    Vulcan
    Oliver Reed
    Rupert/Adolphus
    Charles McKeown
    Bill/Albrecht
    Winston Dennis
    Jeremy/Gustavus
    Jack Purvis
    Queen Ariadne/Violet
    Valentina Cortese
    The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson
    Jonathan Pryce
    Henry Salt
    Bill Paterson
    Sultan
    Peter Jeffrey
    Venus/Rose
    Uma Thurman
    Daisy
    Alison Steadman
    Functionary
    Ray Cooper
    Commander
    Don Henderson
    King of the Moon
    Robin Williams
    Heroic Officer
    Sting
    Colonel
    Andrew MacLachlan
    Dr Death
    José Lifante

    Director
    Terry Gilliam

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