1991 romantic comedy
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A jerky former shock jock, following a violent crime that was at least partially based on the influence of his words, befriends a homeless man in search of the Holy Grail. When it turns out that the homeless man's life was affected by the crime, the DJ tries to help him put his life back together and avoid some scary red knight guy who's riding around Central Park.
Here's a confession that I don't believe I've ever made on this blog: I didn't like Jeff Bridges at all when this movie came out, and it was almost entirely because of the way his hair looked in it. I didn't really know him though. I knew he was the dude (no pun intended) in Tron which was a little redeeming, and I liked Thunderbolt and Lightfoot as a kid but didn't recognize him as Lightfoot. I don't think I liked him in Starman or King Kong either. For a long time, I just thought he was that guy with dick hair who was in Tron for some reason. I still don't like his hair--that fucking ponytail or that fucking bang he always has to brush away--and that scarf he wears? Come on! Of course, the dude's (pun intended this time) won me over, and I think he plays a dick with a heart well here, having one-sided conversations with a Pinocchio doll or trolling stuffy women with lines like, "It's kind of a big titty spread cheeky kind of thing." His voice is perfect for radio, by the way, and I like how Jack's shot in the opening scene in the radio studio where shadows make it look like a jail cell and a camera looking at him from above and stretching to a top that probably isn't there foreshadows a lonely and gray existence. There's another shot with Bridges in a sea of yellow taxis, just so many visuals that trap the character on the screen. Gilliam's sets here aren't nearly as fantastical as they are in his more cartoonish movies, but he uses them well. Parry's boiler room is a perfectly cluttered set, and a usually murky park and a sometimes ritzy and sometimes decaying New York also look great. New York in The Fisher King is a dreamy gray place with constantly swirling pieces of litter, the occasional random little person, a pair of dancers, and loads of lunatics. It paints the city as a place inhabited by nearly all lunatics. I love the lunatics and hobos in this thing, especially John (William Preston) with his mad scream, the "Sell! Sell! Buy!" guy who that Cramer Mad Money guy obviously got his shtick from, a woman screaming about whatever in a hospital lobby, and the effeminate cabaret singer played by the insanely-talented Michael Jeter who was Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle. He gets one scene that's great because it's quirky and one other scene that's great because it's great and he's great. And of course there's good ol' Tom Waits talking about how we're heading for social anarchy when people start pissing on bookstores. He's such a great storyteller, even when they're not his words. There are all kinds of great movie lunatics bouncing off each other in this Gilliam clunk yard, and then there's obviously Robin Williams in what might be my favorite role of his as Parry. I think the thing about Robin Williams is that whatever he was doing, you just kind of had to believe him. He's brilliant here, possibly flashing his schlong in the shadows (unless my mind, like it often does, was just filling in gaps and discussing bowel movements that border on the mystical. His crazy seems natural, a comedic spin on unhinged, and Williams dances on the screen even when he's not dancing. But there is a scene where there actually is dancing, right there in Grand Central Station in front of Tom Waits, and for whatever reason, that eruption of dance and the shot where Parry spots his girl hits hard and really hit hard this latest time I watched the movie.
Creamer vs. Creamer--you got to love those porn titles. And was that Steve Buscemi perusing titles in the back room?
I thought that was Buscemi, too.
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