Lying with A Straight Face

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN Directed by Terry Gilliam

Screenplay by Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam

The grandest film folly since Heaven's Gate! The $40 million pratfall! The project that put Columbia Pictures in the commode! Even Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchhausen, the 18th century adventurer and fabulist on whose alleged exploits this film is based, might pause before telling such tales of artistic profligacy. But Terry Gilliam has the wounds to prove it.

Gilliam, who learned from his days with Monty Python to be truculent and never truckle, had earlier fought Universal Pictures when it was reluctant to release his film Brazil -- a masterpiece at a mere $15 million. This time he would run up a higher tab -- say, $17 million to $20 million over budget -- and into bigger trouble. David Puttnam, Munchausen's Hollywood sponsor, soon departed as boss of Columbia. Film Finances Inc., which stepped in to supervise the picture, threatened to fire Gilliam if he didn't scale back on the spiraling costs. A producer sued Columbia, claiming that five years ago it agreed to a Munchausen project based on a 1942 German movie he owns.

Is Gilliam's picture worth all the fuss? Sure, because he has tapped the cinema's capacity for lying with a straight face. If you can create a vision onscreen, then it's true. At the start, Baron Munchausen (John Neville) strides onstage to recount his hoodwinking of a sulky Sultan (Peter Jeffrey), his dalliance with the Queen of the Moon (Valentina Cortese), his flirtation with the goddess Venus (Uma Thurman), his captivity inside a giant fish, and his long-odds battle with the Turkish army. Except for young Sally (Sarah Polley), his listeners don't know if he's telling the truth. But his viewers know; Gilliam has used the magic of film to show them the wonders Munchausen has limned. Lovers dance in midair in an underworld waterfall ballroom. The baron sails to the moon in a ship wafted by a hot-air balloon. One of his servants (Eric Idle) outruns a speeding bullet. A terrifying angel of death hovers over the baron, like a fiendish C.P.A. over Gilliam's pricey dreams.

A few episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents. Starlight spangles a lunar beach as the baron's ship drifts ashore for his interview with an Italianate creature (Robin Williams, unbilled and hilarious) who identifies himself as "the King of Everything -- Rei di Tutto. But you may call me Ray." The king's body is detachable from his head, which provokes schizophrenia of celestial proportions. "I got tides to regulate!" the head shouts to his errant anatomy. "I got no time for flatulence and orgasms!"

Everything about Munchausen deserves exclamation points, and not just to clear the air of the odor of corporate flop sweat. So here it is! A lavish fairy tale for bright children of all ages! Proof that eccentric films can survive in today's off-the-rack Hollywood! The most inventive fantasy since, well, Brazil! You may not believe it, ladies and gentlemen, but it's all true.