The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

[richardburton]

With this being a Terry Gilliam and also Heath Ledger's final film I REALLY wanted to love this, but I was left disappointed. Don't get me wrong it's visually superb - the effects are great and overall it looks great. Lily Cole looks absolutely stunning too. Heath is ok in it, but it's certainly no where near some of his better roles - the Joker being light years better. Christopher Plummer looks a little bemused at times. Andrew Garfield and Tom Waits serve up the best acting in it. Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law are all pretty mediocre - Farrell, for a change, marginally better than Depp's and Law's pretty forgettable performances. The story itself is also pretty disjointed (this could certainly have been affected by Ledger's untimely death), but at times it just seemed to meander and I actually found myself losing interest and thinking about other things on a number of occassions. Overall, I really expected a lot more from this - what with Gilliam at the helm and more big gun acting talent than you can shaking a whole thatch of sticks at. I'd give it maybe a 2 or a 2.5 out 5. In a word, disappointed.

[evadestruction]

Definately not GIlliams magnum opus. Not up to the standard of Baron Munchausen - even with dated effects. And, yeah, I really wanted to like it more than I did. Not bad, but not brilliant. Spent too much of the film trying to work out what exactly HL's death had affected and how he would have played various scenes