The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen Details

There really was a Baron Munchausen. His full name was Karl Friedrich Hieronymous von Munchausen, and he lived from 1720 to 1797 and fought for the Russians against the Turks. He was, it is said, in the habit of embellishing his war stories.

The special effects are astonishing for its time, but so is the humor 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.

These adventures, and others, are told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them. It's one thing to spent $46 million; it's another to spend it insouciantly. The movie 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.

The movie is slow to get off the ground (the prologue in the theater goes on forever before we discover what it's about), and sometimes the movie fails on the basic level of making itself clear. We're not always sure who is who, how they are related, or why we should care. One of the things you have to do, when you fill a movie with extravagant fantasies, is to explain the story in clear and direct terms, so it doesn't fly apart with intoxication at its own exuberance.

I would recommend this to people of all ages who have not lost the wish to live a fantasy. It is a classic film that can be watched again and again.

Unjustly underrated

It's a visual delight. Uma as Venus is truly divine. Could never understand why critics slated it. It's great.