GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Eumenides_0 The Czech master of animation Karel Zeman brings to life the amazing adventures of one of the greatest characters of literature, the inimitable Baron Munchhausen. However this is not a mere retelling of his adventures. Zeman's version is also a celebration of imagination, love, dashing heroics and the dreams.An astronaut arrives on the moon and to his bewilderment he's met by Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan from Jules Verne's From The Earth to the Moon (it's good to know they arrived safely to the moon), and by Cyrano de Bergerac. They could easily have been accompanied by Astolfo, Lucian and other famous Moon travelers. It's clear this is meant to be taken symbolically: the moon has been the inspiration of countless poets, inventors and writers, it's our most cherished symbol of imagination. What better place to start such a fantastic story? On the moon is also Baron Munchhausen. He mistakes the astronaut for a 'moonling' and decides to take him to Earth to teach him Earthly customs. But they arrive on a mysterious, 19th-century-like world, which seems a mix of Gustave Dore and Piranesi. There they fight Turks, live inside gigantic whales, and defeat invading armies and. All the while the astronaut and a princess fall in love. The ending to this heroic love story is cheerful, bright and inspiring.Amusing as the characters' antics may be, the great pull of this movie is really the amazing visuals. Zeman uses a fascinating cross of live action and animated sets with unique hues of colors that give the world a menacing and enigmatic feel. The use of shadows and silhouettes are amazing too, as are the puppets.Unfortunately unknown by the masses, this movie also has the reputation of having inspired Terry Gilliam's own Baron Munchhausen. One can only hope more directors took inspiration from this movie. Modern cinema, with its monotonous colors and unimaginative stories, could only benefit.

brolsky By now, nearly everyone should be familiar with the Munchausen story or, at least, some portion of it even if shi didn't grown up on these German drinking boasts which got way out of hand. This is not the first or last treatment of the braggart Baron, but this version has a charm that many others lack. The film is shot, predominantly in sepia tone with occasional bits in exaggerated color for artistic emphasis. Those who recall the pink coat in Schindler's List will have some idea of what is happening. But, in this case, the effect is not so much an attempt to indicate a major event that was necessarily slighted in the film. Rather, it helps to emphasize the aspects of the fantastic and the fairy tale romanticism that the director is emphasizing. The live actors are shot against an animated background and are often blithely unaware of the fantastic things that are sweeping around them while they concern themselves with the essentially silly issues of their lives. This is Czech animation which seems rather exotic to those of us raised on Disney-esque 'realism'. Still, it's stylism adds a charm to the film that helps to reinforce the multiple layers that the director has built into this piece. You should not attempt to become involved in the film so much as to sit back and marvel at the world that is passing unobserved by those passing through it. When it has finished,you will want to watch it again and again to catch how all the different visual layers interact in your mind if not on the screen. If I had to compare this effect to any other film, I suppose I would choose the way that Altman weaves the foreground and background into the midground in "M*A*S*H", though the two films are very different and have completely different statements about the world. This is a fantasy and it is truly fantastic, but only on an adult level. Children will have many questions that all come down to 'why is it happening that way?' For children, fantasy is a chance to dream dreams and play games. This is a film for adults that has found an adult way to present the wit and contradiction of the original stories while acting out the ingenuousness of the characters' actions. See this one. It deserves your attention.

gott-1 "Baron Munchausen" ("Baron Prasil" in Czech) is one of the most charming and poetic movies among those thousands which I saw ...It is that very rare kind of movie I love to see for dozen and dozen of times, in virtually any mood and time ...Old illustrations by Gustave Dore brought to life by an unforgettable visual imagination of Karel Zeman ...Everything dressed in a soft melancholy of an enchanting music by great Zdenek Liska, so simple and sophisticated at the same time...Though Zeman is mostly painting his magic world by his unique visual creativity, those able to understand the Czech dialogues get another lovely dimension, inhabited by fine jokes and never-tiring games with words...And of course, Milos Kopecky as the Baron is the very symbol and soul of Munchausen ...An essential classic movie for every true film fan (not recommended for nervous consumers and victims of Hollywood moneymakers, however).How much those modern versions of Munchausen (and whatever are their modifications and names) miss the point of this magic Zeman's version: its fundamental visual craftsmanship, soft melancholy of a fable, an inspired music, and everything in a perfect union ...How poor and tedious is 99.99% of that Hollywood stuff in comparison with this Zeman's masterpiece ...No, they cannot do such a movie any more with all those naturalistic computer tricks, but a total lack of Karel Zeman's insight and visual poetry...

BugEye Probably the most charming of the filmic adaptations of Raspe's 'Baron Munchausen". Czech animator Zeman creates a wonderland by combining live actors, animated models, and old prints to relate the Baron's marvelous adventures. A tour de force of the visual imagination.