In this, as in Brazil before it, Terry Gilliam has again turned what would be a tale of wonder into a tale of wampum, and has managed at the same time to wrest maximum sympathy from the kibitzing Press. That may well be a more astounding trick than any of those attempted on screen, just as the off-screen saga of Runaway Production Costs, Tussles over the Creative Throttle, Ship-Jumpings in Mid-Course, and so on, is much more thrilling than any on-screen visit to any belly of any whale. Some of the marvels on view perhaps sound all right as you rephrase them in your mind: the detachable head, for instance, on the King of the Moon (an undeniably show-stopping, if only because anachronistic and off-key, performance by Robin Williams), to allow body and mind to pursue their separate interests at the same time. And a few of the marvels even leap out at you as actually looking all right, like the sight of the Baron catching a ride on a cannonball. But the unremitting and steamrolling procession of them, something like a Fellini film on steroids (with even Fellini's trusty cameraman, Giuseppe Rotunno), is sooner or later numbing. More likely sooner than later. This is inherently the most fragile, the most abstract, most verbal kind of fantasy -- verbal, that is, in the way of cow-jumping-over-the-moon nursery rhymes -- and greater production values (i.e., greater reality, greater literalness) can only be wasted on it. Of the numerous screen incarnations of the mythical Baron Munchausen, it is therefore reasonable to postulate a steady decline, particularly in the important areas of innocence and charm, from the 1911 Georges Méliès one (to which Gilliam pays conscious but condescending tribute in the stage-bound opening) down through the 1961 Karel Zeman one and on, finally, to the present one. What more is this movie, really, than just another big and expensive remake? With John Neville, Eric Idle, Uma Thurman, and Oliver Reed. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd