The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
HIS:
Frankly, I’m still scratching my head in disbelief at this one. Terry Gilliam has stamped his trademark quirkiness over every minute of the running time and honestly, should have been forced to tone it all down. Unfortunately, the late Heath Ledgers final moments onscreen will be in this turkey. Ledger and Gilliam have reunited to do a film possibly as bad as the risible Brothers Grimm. Don’t get me wrong,Im a huge Monty Python fan, a huge Terry Gilliam fan too but this is definitely a huge mis-step.
It’s a real Jekyll and Hyde movie in the sense that when the movie is grounded in reality(about 50% of the time), it’s quite an intriguing ensemble farce yet the other half is just bad. The fantastical imaginings of Gilliams mind worked brilliantly as animated interludes during Pythons comic sketches, indeed they were put to good use in films such as Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Twelve Monkeys(and I’d still dearly love to see his ‘lost’ Don Quixote) but Dr Parnassus is just wild abandon. Rather shoddy CGI all the way through doesn’t help either and makes it look pretty terrible on the big screen.
The drama however is rather interesting, if a little silly and the acting on display is mostly solid. Obviously everyone is watching Ledger posthumously and he does a good if not great job. He starts off rather well but seems to frequently lose track of his accent. It’s quite apparent and does distract from what is otherwise another good performance of his.
The spectacle(and it is a spectacle) of watching how Gilliam managed to finsh the movie with the inclusion of Johnny Depp,Colin Farrell and Jude Law all playing the remainder of Ledgers unfinished scenes is rather clever. In short, it works very well and all three perform admirably(although Johnny Depp captures the laissez-faire atitude best, with a smile and a wink).
Best of all though is Andrew Garfield,a young British actor of increasing renown who manages to steal almost every scene he’s in with a remarkable turn of wit.
The strangest film you’ll see this year……and a pretty bad one at that.
D.
