The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 adventure fantasy film, co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams and Uma Thurman. An international co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, the film is based on the tall tales about the 18th-century German nobleman Baron Munchausen and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire. The film was a notorious box office bomb, grossing just $8 million, losing Columbia Pictures $38 million. Despite this, it received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup. Plot In an unnamed war-torn European city in the "Age of Reason", amid explosions and gunfire from a large Ottoman army outside the city gates, a fanciful touring stage production of Baron Munchausen's life and adventures is taking place. In a theatre box, the mayor, "The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson", reinforces the city's commitment to reason by ordering the execution of a soldier who had just accomplished a near-superhuman feat of bravery, claiming that his bravery is demoralizing to other soldiers and citizens. Not far into the play, an elderly man claiming to be the real Baron interrupts the show, protesting its many inaccuracies. Over the complaints of the audience, the theatre company and Jackson, the "real" Baron gains the house's attention and narrates through flashback an account of one of his adventures, of a life-or-death wager with the Grand Turk, where the younger Baron's life is saved only by his amazing luck plus the assistance of his remarkable associates: Berthold, the world's fastest runner; Adolphus, a rifleman with superhuman eyesight; Gustavus, who possesses extraordinary hearing and sufficient lung power to knock down an army by exhaling; and the fantastically strong Albrecht.