"This is precisely the sort of thing no one ever believes," says Baron Munchausen while climbing up a crescent moon in a galaxy filled with living constellations. That line encapsulates the entire two hours of one of the most imaginative fantasy adventures I have ever seen.

For The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the third film in his "Trilogy of Imagination," director Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Brazil) adapted the tall tales of Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Baron von Munchausen, a real German cavalry officer around whom a series of absurd fictional adventures centered. I have heard two reports, one which states that a friend wrote the tales to the Baron’s chagrin, and the other which claims that the Baron himself was a grandiose liar in real life. Regardless, the tales became part of German folk literature, and have been made into films twice previously.

Gilliam’s adaptation opens with The Town under attack by The Sultan – a humorous vagueness that runs throughout the film. The town administrator (Jonathan Pryce) is a legalistic paperwork fiend who thinks everything, even the Sultan’s war, can be solved by science, reason, and signing the right parchment, a theme continued over from Brazil. And the chief civilian divertissement is the local theater, where Henry Salt (Bill Paterson) and Company are performing The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

At one evening’s performance, the real Baron Munchausen (John Neville) shows up. Incensed at the license the young whipper-snappers are taking at the expense of his good name, the aging soldier interrupts the show, hijacking the stage to correct the injustice.

The Baron claims that he personally is the cause of the Sultan’s war. In a flashback with a beautiful transition shot, the Baron relates how he managed to win the Sultan’s entire fortune of gold and jewelry in a bet. Quite unhappy at losing that wager, the Sultan (Peter Jeffrey) pursued the Baron. Now, decades after the original affront, the Sultan has him trapped in the Town and persists in wasting cannon shot in the hopes of flushing him out. But exploding theater walls and flaming sets do little to dissuade the Baron from his determination to regroup his cadre of servants so that they can defeat the Sultan once and for all.

The Baron’s personal attendants in younger days were Berthold (Eric Idle), who could run thousands of miles per hour; Adolphus (Charles McKeown), who could see well enough to shoot an apple off a tree halfway around the world, and had the gun to do it; Gustavus (Jack Purvis), who could hear a man snoring from miles away; and Albrecht (Winston Dennis), who was strong enough to lift entire sailing vessels and sling them around by their anchors. This collection of fantastic misfits helped the Baron win the original bet, and now they are needed to save the Baron’s head from becoming part of the Sultan’s collection.

The Baron takes off to find his compatriots accompanied by Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), who has just enough childhood innocence and naivete to believe the Baron when he says he is the Town’s only hope. The adventures that ensue are a tremendous joy to watch, and I will not lessen their impact by analyzing them here, except to say that if seeing a man fly to the moon in a hot air balloon bothers you because you can’t help thinking about the impossibility of space travel without oxygen, this movie is not for you.

This film reminds me of such children’s books as The Five Chinese Brothers and The King With Six Friends, in which a bizarre collection of talented individuals pool their abilities to attain a happy ending. Gilliam’s creativity in bringing this particular story to the screen is as thrilling as those books were to me as a young boy. I love watching Berthold chasing a bullet, or Gustavus standing in Turkey gaging the wind speed in Italy just by listening, or the Baron blasting his way out of a whale using a pinch of snuff. And I often tried, as a boy, to lift myself off the ground by pulling up on my hair – the Baron actually succeeds. This wild story is told with energy and flair, and never fails to provide new and interesting wonders for us to behold. Watching the King of the Moon (Robin Williams) literally lose his head as it wrenches itself from his body is both comical and, if you have retained any youthful capacity to dream, amazing.

The theme here is one that Gilliam has presented before: Enjoy Your Imagination. We live in a world that has little patience for people who refuse to keep their feet on the ground, a world that would label someone like the Baron as insane. In one of the Baron’s many death scenes, he grouses to little Sally: "It’s all logic and reason now! No place for three-legged Cyclops in the South Seas, no place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine! No place for me!"

But Gilliam is not telling us to simply abandon rational behavior in favor of our wildest dreams. There is a time and place for responsibility, a fact which Sally must repeatedly remind the Baron of before his imagination distracts him to the point of rendering him completely useless in life.

John Neville (The Fifth Element, Little Women) portrays the Baron with uncompromised zeal, charging into each new adventure with anything ranging from casual aplomb to vigorous enthusiasm. Although the film flopped miserably thanks to some shenanigans in the Columbia corporate offices, it did launch Neville’s North American film career, and his performance makes it easy to see why.

Sarah Polley is an excellent choice as Sally Salt. She is precocious, and has just the nagging tone of voice she needs to break the Baron out of his reveries and get on with saving the Town. Polley has since gone on to appear in films such as Go and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, but I will always remember her as the girl who wanted to hear the end of the Baron’s story.

A handful of character actors fill out the rest of the cast, the most notable of which is Eric Idle (Nuns on the Run, Monty Python and the Holy Grail), who is always likeable and has great fun as Berthold. Jack Purvis (Brazil) appears in one of his last film roles, the rock star Sting drops in for about thirty seconds as a wounded soldier, and Winston Dennis finally gets some dialogue after being mute and completely costumed over in both Time Bandits and Brazil.

These fine performers work well with a script by Gilliam and Charles McKeown that is generally clever and exciting. Though the story is somewhat episodic in its leaps from one destination to another, thus preventing any real subtext or character arcs, the script doesn’t seem to care; it is too busy having fun.

The film is a very lavish production which looks like it spared no expense. As much as I want to be a film director, I am intimidated by the thought of such huge sets, such broad sweeping beaches filled with soldiers and armaments – all of which was real since CGI crowds were not a possibility at the time. Vulcan’s ornate ballroom is a masterpiece, the belly of the whale is awesome, and the surface of the moon is where the art directors obviously relaxed and got delightfully silly. There are imperfections, to be sure – the scale models and some flying wires are easily detected – but the look is still fantastic.

Costumes by Gabriella Pescucci are equally inspired. They range from highly realistic to fantastically outrageous, and the sheer number of them is impressive in itself. The make-up department had the difficult job of making John Neville, already in his 60's, look anywhere from thirty to ninety years old based on the Baron’s mood. And just for fun, find a picture of Neville without his make-up on, to see how much they added to his nose.

All this technical artistry was recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Art Direction, Costumes, Make-Up, and Special Effects. (It lost, respectively, to Batman, Henry V, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Abyss.) And yet, I was surprised to learn, the film has earned a place in cinematic history for being the textbook example of what Hollywood calls a fiasco. I don’t have room here, and apparently there is a whole book on the subject if you’re curious.

I do have a mild objection to a questionable moral tone woven into the production.  The Baron is something of a philanderer, flirting with every female he meets, including the married ones.  And gentlemen in the audience with a sense of propriety will want to divert their eyes when Venus first appears in her cockle shell.  (Call me a prude, but yes, I have standards.  Go look up a print of Botticelli’s “Venus Rising” to see what you missed, if you must.  It’s actually a shade more modest than the film.)  I believe PG-13 would be a more appropriate rating.

Having acknowledged its imperfections, I will say that this is without a doubt my favorite film. The Baron is a vigorous, enthusiastic figure whose laugh alone is enough to urge us to get on our horses, whip out our swords, and charge headlong into life’s challenges. The creativity of the storyline and the many fantastic whims that decorate the film never lose their savor with me, even after the gazillionth viewing. From the opening fanfare (by the late Michael Kamen – one of the most thrilling bars of music I have ever heard) to the triumphant ride into the sunset, my day is always brighter after watching the Baron’s exploits.

Floating heads, a two-dimensional city, a waltz with Venus, a three-headed mechanical bird, a tea party with the god of war, a card game with Death - these are things no one ever believes. But every now and then, just for a moment or two, maybe we should stop and imagine.