THE FISHER KING  (1991)  **1/2

Reviewed 1991

The Fisher King stars Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges and is directed by Terry Gilliam, maker of such films as the wonderful Brazil, the messy Time Bandits, and the pleasing but centerless The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The Fisher King itself is passable. It has some brilliant but all too brief moments; however, few of these have anything to do with what the film is about.

What it is about or rather what it is supposed to be about is redemption. Bridges plays Jack Lucas, a self-oriented New York talk-radio disk jockey, who inadvertently inspires a deranged listener to commit mass murder. In a cut, three years pass. In the interim, Jack, in his guilt, has lost all self-respect. Wandering one night, he gets attacked and is about to be murdered when Parry (Williams), a looney streetperson, shows up and saves him. In one of those unbelievable literary contrivances, Jack learns that Parry's wife was a victim in the killing that he blames himself for, and attempts to help Parry hoping this will somehow give him salvation. This help takes the form of setting up Parry with his eccentric dreamgirl Lydia (Amanda Plummer). But as much as Parry wants Lydia, he desires to retrieve the Holy Grail. Parry believes it to be located in a castle-like building on Fifth Avenue (after all, "How can you find anything valuable on the Upper East Side?"). Oh, and Parry thinks he is being pursued by a demonic Red Knight.

The Fisher King is a very Hollywood movie (read "plays-up-to-the-audience"), and supposedly, it is also a serious attempt at treating the theme of redemption. Being such, it fails right from the start. The two do not mix because even when Hollywood films try for depth, they either have to look like they are not or they have to look like that is all they are doing. Hollywood believes a movie cannot sell unless certain ingredients are included such as a big star, at least some comedy, sex, and most of all, the film must be accessible to all, meaning not too intelligent. Intellectualism, the executives think, turns people off. What results is a contradiction between what one expects thematically and what is presented, because the theme is always compromised. In The Fisher King it is compromised beyond all recognition. I'm not sure what Gilliam had in mind, but if the end product was it, then he's one confused man.

One sequence will demonstrate. Jack is in his girlfriend Anne's video store. A fat, obnoxious woman, who just wants to see "something funny", approaches Jack and asks him for some advice. He gives her the pornographic video Big Peepholes. This move is typical Hollywood, a move to garner laughter without consideration of what is being depicted ideologically. Jack is in a bad mood and is being condescending. Gilliam wants Jack's salvation, that is, Gilliam seems thematically opposed to Jack's attitude at this point in the movie. And yet this scene contradicts that feeling. The way the scene is shot obviously promotes the audience to laugh at and ridicule the woman in light of Jack's actions. Gilliam in his own way is being condescending to this foil character. The audience finds Jack's actions to be funny, when it should be offensive. This is emphasized more because the woman is not beautiful. She's shot repulsively with her face sticking squarely in the camera at us, and as the camera moves to avoid her, she follows it smothering us. I have a feeling that were she gorgeous, it would not have been funny at all. Rather we would see Jack's behavior and Gilliam's as they are, unjustifiable and vulgar.

The acting in the film is terrific, though unfortunately Gilliam could not quite control Robin Williams enough. The result is that, like many Robin Williams characters, Parry ends up being more Williams than Williams is Parry. Williams gets lines like "I have a hard-on for you the size of Florida" and does this mystical bowel movement act, both of which would seem more appropriate in one of his stand-up routines than in this movie. Amanda Plummer is fantastic. As Lydia, she knocks down everything she touches. She's the bright spot of the movie, and the film moves up a level whenever she's in it. Michael Jeter too must be commended for his role as a gay cabaret singer. Mercedes Ruelh is exemplary as Jack's girlfriend Anne, but it looks like her bust is about to burst out in virtually every scene she's in. She changes clothes throughout the movie, but it seems as though everything in her wardrobe is designed to be worn with a wonderbra. This doesn't go unnoticed by Parry in a scene without rhyme or reason where he and the audience get to ogle her bending over him. I guess this is the mandatory sex part.

Roger Pratt is director of photography, and his past credits include Brazil and Batman. The Fisher King looks very flashy, but unusual for Gilliam, an excellent director, his choice of camera placement is often awkward. Still, he manages to choreograph at least one brilliant shot. Anne breaks up with Jack after they visit Parry in the hospital. The camera is on a crane and tracks Anne from a distance as she walks away from Jack. He hesitates at first to go after her as she descends a great staircase. The camera pans down to meet her at the bottom of the stairs just as Jack reaches the top pursuing her.

Richard LaGravenese wrote the screenplay. The quality of the dialogue goes up and down. Some of it makes you want to groan. A line like "I've been dating longer than I've been driving" is bland and "You're the greatest thing since spice racks" makes you want to roll your eyes. The movie wants to allure us with its quirkiness but it's not inventive enough. Soon the quirkiness becomes predictable, and finally, just wearisome. The sole exception is a surrealistic dance sequence in Grand Central Station. By the end of the film, you can second-guess the dialogue. The "I love you" phrase is probably the easiest to see coming in all of movies. At the very end, the characters go to Central Park as they had done earlier in the film, and they sing a song they had sung (several times) earlier in the film, and we get a classic case of nostalgic reiteration, classic Hollywood, classic contrivance, much ado about nothing.