"The Fisher King" (1991), Directed by Terry Gilliam, Produced by Debra Hill and Lynn Obst, and Starring Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl, and Amanda Plummer

[DonRocks]

The Fisher King was a tough, tough movie for me to "get into" - after the first 30 minutes or so, I was nearly certain I was going to dislike it strongly. Then, other things started happening, and I didn't know what to think. Then, from the time when everyone was at the Chinese restaurant up until the time when Parry got Clockwork-Oranged, I thought that interval of the movie was so good I couldn't believe it. Then, the ending became forced and gratuitous.

This film is a patchwork of weird, bad, good, great, odd, hackneyed, overacted, funny, bizarre, pathetic (i.e., pathos), terrifying (e.g. The Red Knight), and I've never seen anything even remotely like it in my entire life.

Feeling melancholy about Robin Williams, I wanted to watch something of his that I was unfamiliar with, and I'm *so* glad I did. He was wonderful in this role, and really carried the movie if you think about it closely - many people say that Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruehl were equally good, but it's just not true - without Robin Williams, this movie wouldn't have worked.

More than just about any other movie in this forum, I'm interested in hearing other peoples' opinions, be they positive, negative, or somewhere in-between. Even one-paragraph comments about certain scenes would be most welcome by these eyes - after all, isn't that what these forums are about, discussion?

Netflix asked me to rate it out of four stars (so their algorithms can help me select future films), and assumed I'd give it 2.5, when in fact I gave it 3. So what does everyone else think about The Fisher King? And what drugged-up, twisted mind thought of such a bizarre movie, anyway?

One of the beauties about this forum is that there's no need to do plot synopses which I feel are both a waste of time, and, simultaneously, great big spoilers. Many movies discussed here are older, and even those that aren't, I vote NO on plot summaries (though people are certainly welcome to write them if they issue spoiler warnings) - they're a remnant from an old-fashioned method of movie criticism that is needless in this medium.