Product: The Fisher King [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 5.0
"I love New York in June!"
Former Monty Python regular Terry Gilliam has directed 13 movies, including the mythical "Baron Munchausen" in 1988, and 2 obvious classics, "Brazil", and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". The year 2003 will bring us his "Good Omens". But in 1991, he gave us the mystical, magical gem "The Fisher King", a tremendous saga about the triumph of the human spirit. "The Fisher King" stars Jeff Bridges as another wounded, lost victim of the psychosis we call the modern world. He's a former talk radio star who destroys his life and many others' with a mean-spirited, thoughtless on-the-air remark. Fractured with guilt, he meets a demented homeless man(Robin Williams), and becomes enlisted in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. Robin Williams performance as Parry, the lost and wounded street person, is the genesis for his future demonic destitute crystalized 11 years later in "Death to Smoochy". Academy Award winning Mercedes Ruehl co-stars. This widescreen DVD(with trailer) is yet another terrific transfer from Columbia Tristar. And Sony gives it the anamorphic treatment. "The Fisher King" is a complete film; funny, compelling, innocent, and irrational. And like an old Howard Hawks epic, it's a street-level expose about the real relationship between two men. Love, Sanity, Redemption, and Ethel Merman. "The Fisher King" is a bountiful fantasy brimming with wonder and escapism....and isn't that what cinema is really all about?