The Fisher King

In a recent review of Baron Munchausen I wrote, I mentioned that every Gilliam film seemed that it was trying to be a Monty Python film. That all of the story elements were thrown away for comedy that was, largely, re-used material from Monty Python, in terms of style. Fisher King is not that in the slightest, granted, there is a different writer on the project. But still, it is clear that experiences such as Brazil change Terry Gilliam as a film maker. As a start, Fisher King is a lot darker and emotional. Every single laugh that comes out of this movie is at expense of another equally emotionally impactful moment that directly follows the joke. Other than Robin Williams, though, the movie plays out quite flat. Every laugh we have as an audience is in reaction to Williams’s wackiness. Later on, though, as we learn more about his character, we are forced to rethink how we look on those moments. This puts us on a very similar journey to Jeff Bridge’s character, allowing the audience to connect. So, it is clear that this film does a lot of things right. But there are also a few faults. Personally, I find the look of the film to be kind of bland. There are no shots in this film that truly accompanied the emotions of it. My other big complaint would be the acting. Yes, Robin Williams is very good in this, but other than that, I found most of the characters to be mediocre at best. And finally, it took me a while to get into the world. While the exposition is fine, there were certain beats that needed to happen in the first act that didn’t. For example, Jeff Bridges needed to spend more time with Robin Williams to connect. It seemed somewhat instant in their relationship, which is annoying. There are other things to nitpick at, but truly, as a whole, this a great film. It’s due to the fact that Terry Gilliams and, in this case especially, Robin Williams are huge comedy stars that were ready to prove that they don’t just do comedy. 8.6/10