Imagine Doctor Parnassus

Big fan of Terry Gilliam, so definitely had to check out his latest pic. Love Brazil, but have to admit not much love for The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. And, unfortunately, this movie is more the latter than the former.

The concept of the movie is that the Master came to Logopolis and silenced all the Logopolitans. (Seriously, this is totally the same plot.) In this case, the Monitor goes on to have many rematches against the Master, and finally ends up with a kid that he makes a final bargain over to save her from him (much like Nyssa!). The bet involves creating Block Transfer Computation realities and seeing if people can see their way through the recursive occlusions. Or something like that.

Christopher Plummer spends a lot of time hidden behind his false beard, Andrew Garfield hasn't heard of subtlety, Verne Troyer has fun, Lily Cole has a rather thankless role to act, but Tom Waits steals every scene (even ones he's not in!).

Okay, let's talk Heath Ledger. Not that impressed by his performance, prefer his previous role. And as for the other Heath Ledgers, Johnny Depp is good, Colin Firth is all right, but Jude Law is the least Heath Ledger of them all.

But what we really want to see are gloriously hugely imagined set pieces, and the movie takes far too long to get there and doesn't have enough of them. Frankly, I want more Gilliam here, but don't think I got enough.

Definitely have to see this on the big screen, but I'm not going to rate this as the best Gilliam movie ever. (That's stil Brazil.)

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