Date of publication: 09/20/1991

(For cast, rating and other information,  click here http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi#cast )

By Roger Ebert

"The Fisher King" is a disorganized, rambling and eccentric movie that contains some moments of truth, some moments of humor, and many moments of digression. The filmmakers are nothing if not generous; we get urban grit, show-biz angst, two love affairs, the holy grail, the homeless, an action sequence, a dance sequence, and an apocalyptic figure on a horse who rides through Central Park with flames shooting from his head. Even with such excess, at 137 minutes the movie shows signs of having been pruned of some of its quiet spots - or did they intend to have all those scenes, back to back, in which people shout at each other?

The film stars Jeff Bridges as Jack, a radio talk show host whose unbalanced listener goes on a shooting spree, apparently following Jack's advice. Jack is devastated and quits his job and drops out into a long, alcoholic reverie, only to be redeemed by Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man who is convinced the holy grail is in the possession of a Manhattan billionaire, and that together they can find it.

The screenplay, by Richard LaGravenese, seems to have been constructed like an airliner, with fail-safe redundancy. There are not only two heroes in need of redemption, but two heroines in need of love: Jack's long-suffering partner Anne (Mercedes Ruehl), and Parry's dream-woman Lydia (Amanda Plummer). And there are not only real-life problems for them to conquer, but also the supernatural possibilities of the grail, the ghost horseman, and Parry's haunting visions. Plus a section in which one of the characters disappears into a coma, and another in which the title is explained in a monologue as long as it is unedifying.

"The Fisher King" is so charming it's hard to say when we notice it has no clothes. Individual sequences are bittersweet and moving, some of William's inventions are funny, there is no denying the originality and force of the Ruehl performance - and yet there comes a time when we cannot sustain one more manic outburst, one more flight of fancy, one more arbitrary twist of plot, one more revelation that the movie tricked us into caring about subjects it eventually throws away.

There is a way in which a movie like this, which allows fantasy to be real, has to play fair with the audience. Take the matter of the holy grail. We wonder at first if it really does still exist, there in that billionaire's mansion (the Fifth Avenue Armory). Later we wonder if it matters. Later we wonder if it was a real cup, or only an idea, that the characters were seeking. Later we wonder if it made any difference if they found it.

I mentioned that some of Robin Williams' moments are funny. They are. But he is also present at some of the movie's low points, in which a rush of verbal cleverness is allowed for its own sake, and the movie suffers. More than any other good actor now at work, Williams needs strong guidelines to reach his best performances. Perhaps he should start avoiding roles that are "made for Robin Williams," as this one is. He's best playing against type - against his own improvisational personality. When he does, as in the better scenes of "Dead Poets Society" or all of "Awakenings," he is a master actor. When he is indulged, as he is here, he overflows.

Jeff Bridges is as dependable an actor as there is. His problem in this plot is that it takes him on too wild a journey. His own story in the movie - sardonic radio talker sinks into depression after blaming himself for deaths - suggests that he will be redeemed, and a homeless person is a reasonable instrument for his recovery. But then he doesn't merely recover, he goes along for a manic flight through whimsy and invention, through slapstick and romance, through suspense and deathbed comebacks and Chinese dinners, until he finds himself in the position of the little old lady who had really rather not have been helped to cross the street.

Ruehl, with a deep voice and decolletage, is the most reasonable presence in the movie, a woman who loves even when it is not convenient, but can be pushed only so far. Plummer, as a hapless and incompetent waif who attracts the love and sympathy of the Williams character, is given an idea to play, not a person - and not a very good idea. The movie's double-date scene, recycled from many other movies and embarrassing here, suggests that Plummer's character was added simply because director Terry Gilliam and LaGravenese didn't want to leave out anything.

The Fisher King (STAR) (STAR)
   Jack    Jeff Bridges
   Parry   Robin Williams
   Lydia   Amanda Plummer
   Anne    Mercedes Ruehl

Tri-Star Pictures presents a film directed by Terry Gilliam. Produced by Debra Hill and Lynda Obst. Photographed by Roger
Pratt. Written by Richard LaGravenese. Edited by Lesley Walker. Music by George Fenton. Running time: 137 minutes.
Classified R (for profanity). Opening today at local theaters.

(Copyright © The Sun-Times Company All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Ratings

     Sam: 

     Dean:  (5 stars)

Reviews and Comments

     Sam: When a film is this original, this far from the mainstream, it's sometimes difficult to review. The Fisher King is not a perfect film, yet how can I hold its flaws against it in light of a valiant and mostly successful effort to create something fresh and original? Suffice it to say that this Terry Gilliam film should more than please those tired of mainstream movie cliches but not high brow or boring enough to want to endure the stereotypical "art house" film.

     Dean: Only Terry Gilliam really knows if this film is as brilliant as it seems. We mere mortals can but look in awe and count our blessings.

                           By Desson Howe
                           Washington Post Staff Writer
                           September 20, 1991

Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King" is an odd beast. In this case, that's something to treasure. A modern epic that fuses myth with hard-edged reality, it's a one-of-a-kind, thoroughly engaging experience.

It's also a thoroughly long experience. Gilliam never met a film he couldn't overextend. Better to think of this 137-minute drama as several movies in one. "Fisher" has two redemption stories, in which jaded disc jockey Jeff Bridges and traumatized drifter Robin Williams attempt to save each other. It has two love stories. It's a dark, foreboding movie. Yet it's a surreal comedy too. There are colorful visions of red knights, but there is also the harsh truth of the streets. And let's not forget the eternal quest for the Holy Grail.

As the shock-radio DJ, Bridges has a malignant hatred of people. He insults his listeners daily, then he gets stoned in a black, glass tower of a penthouse while listening to the anthemic song "The Power." He's riding high until an emotionally distraught listener takes one of his on-air suggestions too literally. It results in a bloodbath at a fancy restaurant. Bridges goes into a three-year funk, drinking himself to near death and living off girlfriend and video store owner Mercedes Ruehl. At an all-time low, rocks tied to his ankles, he prepares to end  it all in the river.

Enter Williams, an apparently deranged but witty homeless person. After pulling Bridges from the brink of death, Williams informs the DJ he's destined for greatness. All Bridges has to do  is find the Grail (conveniently located in Manhattan) and save the ragged drifter's soul. Williams could also use a little romantic help with Amanda Plummer, a clumsy wallflower
 who works in a publishing office.

It turns out Williams is the victim of a traumatic experience. A former professor, he now lives in a hole in the wall, talks to invisible "fat people," and believes a fire-emitting, mounted knight is constantly pursuing him. Bridges realizes he has to save Williams in order to save himself.

Bridges, a solid actor, lends weighty credence to a modern spiritual journey. At his lowest points, he looks as if he might implode with cynicism. Not enough can be said about Williams. He's a dynamo in whatever he does. He goes from wildly hysterical to poignantly shy, his words spilling out in manic brilliance. When Bridges departs after a night at Williams's pad, Williams yells after him, "Hey, now that you know where we are, come back. Don't be a stranger. Come back, we'll rummage!"

Ruehl and Plummer rise far above their significant-other roles. Ruehl's facial reactions are a specialty. Plummer is a perfect, wild-card partner to Williams. She's gawky, graceful and sexy all at the same time. At dinner in a Chinese restaurant, she and Williams work up an amusing tango of clumsiness, as they battle treacherous chopsticks and slippery meat dumplings. In this movie, at least, they're made for each other.

Scripted by Richard LaGravenese, "Fisher" was not Gilliam's idea. But it ties in with his mythical obsessions, from "The Time Bandits" to "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." As director, he creates some tremendous moments. His crowning scene takes place during morning rush hour at Grand Central Terminal. As Williams waits for Plummer to pass, the station (in his reverie) becomes an ornate ballroom. The commuters suddenly dance with each other in a delirious waltz. Before Williams can claim Plummer as a partner, however, a bell goes off. The dancers become commuters and the working world rushes back in. In this, Gilliam is in his element -- leaping effortlessly from one world to another.

                                               (Copyright The Washington Post)

Director: Terry Gilliam. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer, Michael Jeter, David Hyde
Pierce. Screenplay: Richard LaGravenese.

Brave in its ambitions but unable to sustain its energy, director Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King is a good film that could have been, but isn't, a very good one. Certainly Richard LaGravenese's script earns the tag of "originality" both in its specific conception for the screen and for its own wild, loopy creativity. Gilliam and LaGravenese have conceived of a picture that is simultaneously an offbeat romance, a Grail quest, a bleeding-heart yuppie epiphany, and an unbridled comedy of stylistic excess. Surprisingly, The Fisher King's ultimate problem is not that these divergent goals stumble awkwardly into one another; almost everyone involved works admirably to negotiate the entire range of tones suggested in the writing. On the contrary, alternate moments of comedy, tenderness, and mystery keep arriving but settle disappointingly into a mechanical groove that deflates the buoyant adventurousness of the first hour and a half.

The film opens with a radio show by Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), a shock-jock who cannot decide if he should direct his genial but unmistakable cynicism at his specific listeners or at society in general. Settling for a regimen of sarcasm and unmodulated flippancy, Jack unwittingly incites one repeat caller to bring a rifle into a New York City restaurant and shoot seven of the patrons, then himself. The incident saddens Jack both on the obvious personal level of having possibly incited such a crime and in the more selfish sense that it transpires just as he planned to audition for a potentially big-money sitcom role. This mix of noble emotions and self-indulgence emblematize the broad tonal range of The Fisher King, which bravely opts for uneasy mixes of comedy, drama, and pathos rather than following the easier route of partitioning all the laughs into some scenes and all the hurt into others.

LaGravenese's script jumps forward three years, and we find Jack living as a barnacle off of his girlfriend, Anne, played by Mercedes Ruehl in an Oscar-winning performance of such rigor and clever eccentricity that she makes the no-guff, big-hearted, big-breasted girlfriend seem far less like the mothballed cliché it actually is. (The fact that Anne owns and runs her own video rental store does little to move the role out of convention.) "I do not need this," Anne apostrophizes to Jack one evening when he, typically it seems, has not come home for dinner, and yet Anne keeps "sitting around and cooking like a jerk."

Her anger is well-warranted, but during that particular week, Jack's nighttime absences are anything but planned, certainly not the amorous cavorts of which Anne speculates. Rather, one night finds him with cinderblocks tied to his boots, ready to jump into the Hudson River, when a trio of street thugs mug and beat him until help arrives in the form of an army of hoboes led by Perry (Robin Williams), a loony bird in a large brown smock with the good fortune to have the jaunty comic spirit of Robin Williams. The next night, Jack seeks Perry out to thank him for the rescue and to give him the fifty dollars he hopes will assuage his liberal guilt at having so long ignored the homeless who just saved his life.

The plot of The Fisher King is too strange to elaborate much further without ruining the momentum of the film, a misdeed that Gilliam himself commits about twenty minutes before the movie's conclusion. Even befort that point some aspects of the film, particularly Williams' jolly/sad character, play too much like a screenwriter's idea of distilled outrageousness for us to really care about; still, the film's oddball humor, nervous characters, and adventurous set design keep the project rolling on its own bizarre momentum. Suddenly, though, The Fisher King settles for a mawkish coma subplot and, even more disappointingly, makes its own characters cursory to the action.

Much of the film's middle hour, for example, is devoted to Jack and Anne's project to play match-maker for Perry and Lydia (Amanda Plummer), the mousy office-worker he has watched for months from the street. The courtship between the two is a little too forced, but the actors, like the movie, are charming enough in their weirdness to pull the scenes off. Then, though, when the romance has been established, Gilliam seems to lose all interest in it, and we only see Plummer about three more times, two of those in long-shot. Bigger, more expensive movies typically discard cast members like this, but a film like The Fisher King whose appeal depends on its characters can hardly afford to neglect them so. Gilliam and LaGravenese also attempt to find some suspense in a heist sequence involving Bridges' character, but that particular event has been foreshadowed so deliberately and its outcome is so predictable that the whole sequence seems expendable and indulgent.

Kudos to Jeff Bridges for keeping Jack Lucas an involving character and negotiating both his appealing moments and his scabrous ones to create a convincing central character. This is one of those performances that Bridges fans can cite as worthy evidence that he is a grossly unappreciated talent; that Williams scored an Oscar nod and a Golden Globe for The Fisher King and Bridges did not is in turn an unrebukable critique of the scales of showmanship and flamboyance by which the voters for those awards often appear to weigh their selections. Not that flamboyance is always such a bad thing, and while its energy level remains high, The Fisher King's florid acting and lavish visuals provide the wild ride we expect from Gilliam, a former member of the Monty Python troupe. But flamboyance on autopilot is one of the most dispiriting tones a film can adopt, and by the end of The Fisher King, the picture is a pretty dry well. Grade: B–

Academy Award Nominations and *Winners:
     Best Actor: Robin Williams
     *Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes Ruehl
     Best Original Screenplay: Richard LaGravenese
     Best Art Direction: Mel Bourne
     Best Original Score: George Fenton
Golden Globe *Winners:
     Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)
     Best Director: Terry Gilliam
     Best Actor (Musical/Comedy): Jeff Bridges
     *Best Actor (Musical/Comedy): Robin Williams
     *Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes Ruehl
Other Awards:
     Los Angeles Film Critics Association—Best Actress: Mercedes Ruehl
(http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ndavis/fishking.html)

Gilliam's magical fable for modern times is an original and delightful masterwork complete with love, desperation and redemption. A hypnotic and exceptionally funny parable, the film stars Jeff Bridges as a hotshot D.J. whose world collapses when he feels responsible for a restaurant shooting. A few years later, he finds possible salvation in the form of street person Robin Williams, a former professor whose wife was killed in the slayings. In a quest worthy of the Holy Grail, Bridges sets out to make amends for two of the lives touched by the tragedy. Williams gives one of his best performances: his manic, machine-gun comic delivery is much in evidence, of course, but never has the actor demonstrated such vulnerability and tenderness. Bridges, in a very subdued role, is equally impressive and Oscar-winner Mercedes Ruehl is smashing as his lusty girlfriend. Special mention also goes to Amanda Plummer and Michael Jeter for their fine supporting turns.
 

It's probably not fair to judge fairy tales and fables by the same standards that we use for ordinary stories. There are too many coincidences, for one thing, and the events are fairly predictable. But we can forgive such lapses in classic narratives, where we wouldn't in stories about everyday people.

The fable of The Fisher King, however, doesn't need this double standard. It succeeds equally well as a fairy tale and as a regular story. The success is due largely to the excellent performances of its two stars. Both Williams and Bridges have many technically outstanding and emotionally satisfying roles on their resumes, and their work here compares favorably with their best.

The imaginative cinematography is a plus, too, and so is a supporting cast which fills out the movie's little universe admirably.

Careful moviegoers will, note, however, that the director is Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. His previous movies (Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) have been, at the very least, somewhat odd. This latest effort is perhaps more mainstream than the others, but some of its black humor, or its fantasy elements, won't appeal to everyone.

Bridges plays a talk-radio host named Jack whose fortunes plunge from the heights to the depths, giving him a chance to learn some important lessons about life and about himself. His unlikely teacher is Parry, a street person with definite mental problems, but also an unfailing zest for life.

Parry's and Jack's stories intertwine in several different, always fascinating ways, throughout The Fisher King. They basically play savior and saved, (the title refers to a myth about resurrection and renewal) but switch places unpredictably, constructing as they go a thoughtful and a moving modern parable of redemption and survival.

September 25, 1991

Written by Richard LaGravenese.
Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams.

By CHRIS ROBERGE

ONE OF THE KEY ELEMENTS OF A good fantasy is a sense of wonder and awe. If a story can convey this attitude to the audience, then its humor and excitement will become even more involving. If, as in Terry Gilliam's new film, The Fisher King, the fantasy element falls flat, it threatens to drag the entire film down with it.

The Fisher King opens with Jack Lucas, New York City's most popular shock DJ (adequately played by Jeff Bridges), engaging in verbal battles with the callers of his hit radio talk show. Jack strikes down any hint of optimism with his lethal cynicism. Sitting comfortably in his cold and sterile glass-enclosed apartment, Jack rehearses lines for a proposed sitcom based loosely on his glamorous life. One line that he takes considerable pride in mastering is a wickedly sarcastic, "Well, forgive me!" -- a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of the redemption that Jack will soon seek. Moments later, he learns that his arrogant attitude towards life has triggered a tragedy that will whisk him away from his fame.

Three years later, Jack is working in a sleazy video store run by his new girlfriend, Anne Napolitano, played by the very competent Mercedes Ruehl. His daily ritual reduced to getting drunk and watching reruns of the TV show that he was originally going to star in, Jack decides to end his miserable life. He is saved, though, by a group of the homeless led by Parry (Robin Williams). Parry is a former professor of medieval history, who due to a tragedy linked to Jack's past, has assumed a different personality. Parry now regularly talks to whom he calls "hundreds of the cutest floating fat guys you ever saw."

From this point on, the plot remains fairly entertaining, thanks mainly to Williams' hilarious (if not deep) portrayal of Parry, but begins to wallow in predictable formulas. Parry tells Jack about the two things that he desires most in the world -- a shy, klutzy accountant named Lydia, well-played by Amanda Plummer, and a cup that he believes is the Holy Grail being kept in an East Side billionaire's castle-like home. Jack tries to win the fair maiden and the sacred object for Parry, at first because he wants to feel less guilt, but eventually because he wants to help his new friend. At one point, Parry tells Jack the legend of the Fisher King, a ruler whose world was collapsing around him until a fool was able to show him how to satisfy his goals, in case anyone in the audience couldn't see well into the next reel.

These aren't exactly earthshaking themes at work here, but they are ones with which director Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, is familiar. His previous trilogy of movies -- Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen -- each dealt with how imagination and fantasy could provide escape from realities bogged down by compassionless logic. In those films, however, Gilliam filled the screen with dazzling images in which the estranged heroes could recognize both their fears and their refuges. The Fisher King seems to use Parry's imaginings of the Grail and his hallucinations of a Red Knight as a clumsy, and often unnecessary, means of paralleling the story with a medieval quest. Only one scene in the movie, where as Parry sees Lydia the rush hour commuters in Grand Central Station stop pushing and shoving each other and begin to waltz, manages to give unforced and spontaneous insight into Parry's mind.

The Fisher King is far from being a disaster. Most of the movie is genuinely funny, and the 21/4-hour running time goes by rather quickly. But the simplicity and conventionality of the plot eventually undermine all of the film's attributes, ultimately resulting in a disappointment. Audiences would be better off seeing Dead Again for more entertainment, the amazing Barton Fink for more intelligence and even Brazil if they want to see Terry Gilliam's good version of The Fisher King.

Copyright 1991 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was originally published on Friday , September 27, 1991.
Volume 111, Number 38
The story was printed on page 11.

This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details.

Terry Gilliam is one of the movies' most fascinating and frustrating directors. When he's at the top of his form, no one's work is more imaginative. And when he's off-target,  no one is more irritating. You might be thinking, well, no director is consistent with every film he makes. That's true, of course. But in Gilliam's case, we're not talking about his work from film to film. We're talking about his work in every film. From "Jabberwocky" to "Time Bandits" to "Brazil" to "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," the former Monty Python member demonstrates both his brilliance and his penchant for sabotaging his own narrative. And so it is with "The Fisher King," the first film Gilliam has directed without developing the script himself. And, as eccentric as it is, it's probably the closest he will ever come to a mainstream Hollywood product.

Jeff Bridges stars as a rich and famous but decidedly burned-out New York disc jockey, a late-night shock-talker who would rather insult his listening audience than commiserate. And at the moment he couldn't care less about the problems of the little people — he's about to step up on the ladder to national stardom, headlining a TV sitcom.

Then one night, Bridges takes a call from a disturbed regular and offers, as usual, his own brand of condescending, off-the-cuff wit, unaware that he is sending the caller off on a mission to commit a heinous act of violence. The resulting tragedy sends Bridges into a deep depression.

The film then jumps three years forward. Bridges is wallowing in self-pity, living with and taking advantage of  Mercedes Ruehl ("Married to the Mob"), who owns and operates a small video store. Ruehl seems to be his opposite in every way, outgoing, vivacious and full of life. She obviously loves Bridges, but he's too self-absorbed to notice.

Eventually, just as Bridges is on the brink of suicide, fate steps in, in the person of a zany homeless street-person (Robin Williams). Wouldn't you know it? He's withdrawn from life because of a tragedy in his life, the result of that act of violence three years earlier precipitated by Bridges' radio sarcasm.

Bridges sees Williams as the means to his redemption, but, characteristically, sees it in a selfish way. He reasons that if he helps Williams get back on his feet, he himself will be saved.

Little does he know that Williams is on a quest for the Holy Grail, which he believes is locked up in a castle in midtown Manhattan. Or that Williams loves from afar a gawky young woman (Amanda Plummer) with no friends — and virtually no life.

For me, the most annoying aspect of "The Fisher King" is its penchant for extreme highs followed by extreme lows — with very little room for middle emotions in between. The result is a roller-coaster ride with no lulls, jerking the audience in every direction rather than legitimately earning a response.

When the film is funny, it's very funny. When it's touching, it's very touching. But when it careens wildly out of control, which is all too often, it is most annoying. (In particular the ending, which seems to be out of an old Hollywood musical.)

Still, there is much to savor here, not the least of which are the performances of the stars. Williams takes a tailor-made wacko role and gives it compassion and depth, and Bridges' despairing DJ is pitiable and heartfelt, a selfish, pained individual who does not easily reveal what's inside. Ruehl is also wonderful, in what might have been merely silly comic relief. Plummer is so realistic in her characterization of a plain, unhappy woman that it's almost painful to watch her. And Michael Jeter (TV's "Evening Shade") has a wonderful bit as a homeless transvestite who does a show-stopping Ethel Merman tune at a pivotal point in the film.

First-time screenwriter Richard LaGravenese has come up with some terrific ideas here, though it is hard to tell  where his script leaves off and director Gilliam's surrealistic style takes over. But perhaps the film's most significant achievement is that it takes the homeless situation and focuses it on real individuals (however exaggerated they may be), making us care about them as people.

"The Fisher King" is not like any other movie you're likely to see very soon, but if you can get by its frustrating  elements, there is much to savor.

"The Fisher King" is rated R for violence, profanity, nudity, sex, vulgarity and drugs.