I mainly rented the Fisher King because I just saw Insomnia and wanted to see some of Robin Williams earlier movies, I was very intrigued when I saw he was nominated for Best Actor for "The Fisher King", it also had some good reviews and Oscar and GG nominations, so I took it up on the hype. The Fisher King is a pointless story, it starts with Jeff Bridges as a shock radio DJ who is basically a recreation of Howard Stern, so much so it isn't even funny. Bridges tells a caller to deal with a situation in a lucrative manner, the man kills some people in a resturant, one of those people is William's wife, but that isn't told to us until the near end of the story. Anyways Bridges finds Parry (Robin Williams), or rather Parry finds Bridges when Bridges has stumbled into a junkyard, drunk , maybe twenty miles away from his house, and his life is threatened by junkyard punks, Williams stands up and acts crazy, and I guess that is enough to scare them off. Parry takes Bridges to his basement where he lives until he wakes up, Bridges thanks Parry, and soon comes back to see him, thus the dragging story begins. Bridges "realizes" he needs to save Parry for some reason, before he can revive his career and life. Parry is mentally unstable because of the loss of his wife, but even that loss probably wouldn't cause a man to lose his mind completely and decide to live in a dump wearing a trash can lid as a helment. Anyways Parry has been noticing a girl at an office (Amanda Plummer), he wants to date her, so Bridges helps get Plummer with the help of his girlfriend (Mercedes Rhuel), they get Parry together with her, Rhuel and Bridges get back together after tough times. The main point of the story is that you can't fix yourself until you fix your mistakes. There is a side story about Parry finding the Holy Grail which is totally misleading and absolutely unnecessary.
One expects Terry Gilliam movies to be very strange and funny. I think old Gilliam got a little greedy after his hit Brazil in 1985, he took a horrible script and directed this, hoping to make a bigger name for himself. Thank God he recovered with 12 Monkeys in 1995 which was a great movie. You can pass this one, seriously. None of the Academy nominations were deserved, Rhuel's win over Juliette Lewis was a complete crock, Lewis lost souly because of her age.
One expects Terry Gilliam movies to be very strange and funny. I think old Gilliam got a little greedy after his hit Brazil in 1985, he took a horrible script and directed this, hoping to make a bigger name for himself. Thank God he recovered with 12 Monkeys in 1995 which was a great movie. You can pass this one, seriously. None of the Academy nominations were deserved, Rhuel's win over Juliette Lewis was a complete crock, Lewis lost souly because of her age.