Talk about a special treat, Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is some of the most fun I have had watching a movie in a long time. I watched it twice all the way through, once with the commentary and then about half of it with the Blu-ray pop-up trivia feature on. It really is a great, great film and primarily because it doesn't lean solely on the slapstick style of Gilliam's Monty Python roots, a style of film I am not particularly interested in and don't find funny.

The film centers on the title character, Baron Munchausen (John Neville), and is based on the tall tales told of the German adventurer Karl Friedrich von Munchausen back in the 1700s. The film chronicles an aging Baron as he must save a small European town from destruction by gathering his faithful partners including a strong man, a "blows like the wind" little person and a guy that can see for miles. The Baron is joined by Sally Salt played by a young Sarah Polley and encounters giant sea fish, the king of the Moon (Robin Williams) and the goddess Venus played by Uma Thurman in only her third feature film prior to the release of Dangerous Liaisons.

The film has comedy, adventure, action, drama and an amazing group of actors, but as the special features will show you, it wasn't all roses. An in-depth documentary discusses the making of the film through all its trials and tribulations. It's always interesting to hear about how some of the greatest films in history almost never were. I wouldn't necessarily say this film is an all-time great, but it is damn fun and I will certainly be watching it again and am glad the suits didn't ultimately shut it down, and I am sure they are happy too as it went on to earn four Oscar nominations.

There are also some deleted scenes, storyboards and a commentary with Gilliam and writer/actor Charles McKeown, and they are all okay, but nothing too great. The one thing the set didn't have that it really should have had was a documentary on the real Baron Munchausen. Wikipedia has a healthy amount of info on the man and it really would have made this a classic home video release.

As it stands, the Blu-ray presentation is fantastic, especially considering the varying amount of colors. The lack of that one feature is odd, and you do get some info in the exclusive Blu-ray pop-up feature, but reading those silly little notes while I watch is more distracting than it is entertaining. You are buying this release in order to watch the documentary once and to watch the movie over and over again. It really is a film you can fall in love with, and it has won me over.