The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is directed by Terry Gilliam and stars Eric Idle, John Neville, Sara Polley, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, and Robin Williams. ***

It's nearly impossible to put the storyline of the film into words, but I'll do my best. The film is based on a classic story, and numerous film adaptations had followed long before. The story follows the title character, who has lived a life of fantasy. His city is overrun, and the word is fast changing. When a production company presents a show based on the Baron's life, he must prove that he is actually the Baron, must along with his crew, save the town the only way he knows how. ***

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a weird, wild film that defies category. In other words, exactly what you'd expect from Terry Gilliam, the same man who brought us Time Bandits and Brazil. Despite some flaws, this is a fantastic film, with what were then state-of-the-art special effects, and interesting characters and situations. It's a fun movie, it looks fantastic, and some terrific performances only add to the experiences. ***

The cast of the film is one of its strongest assets. John Neville brilliantly portrays the title character, further helping to bring this classic story to live. No one else could have played this role quite like him. Other solid performances come from the director's old Monty Python acquaintance Eric Idle, the always-entertaining Robin Williams, and even Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies, Pirates of the Caribbean series.) It's due in no small part to their efforts that this is the most famous on-screen adaptation of this classic tale. ***

The “look” of the film must also be praised. The film came out two decades ago, and needless to say Gilliam wasn't working with technology comparable to modern CGI. But using what technology was available at the time, he managed to put together a film that looks absolutely fantastic. It's a movie that has to be seen in action to be appreciated - and it NEVER shows any signs of its troubled production (if you're curious about what went on behind the scenes, the DVD has some wonderful features that detail the numerous issues. More on those later.) ---

Image And Sound:

For the most part, the people at Sony did a fabulous remastering job on the film. The images are, throughout the entire film, bright and clear. It's an improvement over the earlier DVD releases. Some shots in the movie suffer from grain, but this is to be expected considering the source material is two decades old. Grain issues in a few scenes don't derail what is otherwise excellent image quality. ***

As the brainchild of Terry Gilliam, this movie has a lot of unique sound effects throughout. And you'll be pleased to know they come across brilliantly on the DVD. The experienced has been mixed well, and there are no negative audio issues whatsoever.

As a two-disc set, we get quite a few pieces of bonus material here worth checking out. Gilliam and McKeown recorded a commentary track together, and it's definitely worth watching at least once for any fan of the film. Munchausen had a troubled production, and the commentary sheds a lot of light on what went on behind the scenes and during the process of filmmaking. The same can be said of the all-new 3-part making-of featurette, put together for this new release. It too is worth looking at for anyone interested in exploring what went on while the movie was getting made. Additionally, we get some scenes that didn't make the final cut of the movie, and storyboards chronicling scenes that were to be filmed but never were, due to the troubled production - and new voiceovers have been provided to the storyboard scenes, to give a better idea of what these scenes would have been like, had they been filmed. All in all, a damn good special edition. These features make this the undisputed best home video release of Munchausen to date. ***

Additionally, Sony released a Blu-Ray version of the movie simultaneously with the DVD version. If you own a Blu-Ray player, I would recommend getting that version instead of the conventional DVD, because it contains a trivia track not presented on the standard DVD release. ---

Final Words: