The play is spectacular enough, but it is interrupted in mid-performance by an odd, eccentric old man (Neville), who claims to be the real Baron Munchausen and who reveals himself as the true target of the sultan's attack. It seems that on a past visit to Turkey, the baron and his servants (including among them super-speedster Berthold [Eric Idle], strongman Albrecht [Winston Dennis], diminutive hurricane Gustavus [Jack Purvis] and uncanny marksman Adolphus [co-writer Charles McKeown]) tricked the sultan out of his entire national treasury. The vengeful sultan will stop at nothing to get his hands on the baron again. And that's not even the worst of the baron's problems, as he is also actively pursued by the Grim Reaper himself.

With the town about to fall, the baron must escape in a hot air balloon sewn out of ladies' undergarments and search the moon, the underworld and the bottom of the sea for his missing servants. He doesn't count on a stowaway: little Sally Salt (Polley), youngest member of the theater troupe, who's determined to keep the Baron on track. ...

Passion, bombast and a pinch of snuff

The genius of this film was always clear, even though it was significantly less than a hit upon its initial release. To be sure, it seemed cruelly flawed then. It was loud, fueled as much by explosions and spectacle as it was by cleverness and imagination, and so determined to race from one visual climax to another that it emerged as exhausting. But that was almost two decades ago. In the years that followed, there have been so many fantasy films with nothing to offer but explosions and spectacle that Munchausen's once-dizzying pace now seems quaint ... freeing the imaginative elements to soar in the manner that director Terry Gilliam intended. Everything works at a higher level, from the bizarre cityscape ruled by the King of the Moon to the uncontrolled passion the baron arouses in just about every beautiful female he encounters. The better gags, like the sultan's operetta "The Torturer's Apprentice," performed on a sort of pain organ with live, screaming prisoners providing the notes, are less obscured by bombast and more revealed as moments of divine inspiration.

What audiences may have forgotten, if they haven't seen this film for a while, is just how much it rests on its galaxy of fine performances. Sure, Neville is regal and ridiculous as Munchausen. And the uncredited Robin Williams, at the peak of his abilities, is just as much a hoot as the King of the Moon. But there's also the late, lamented Oliver Reed, playing the lovelorn God Vulcan, whose helpless fluttery lust for his wife, Venus (a then-unknown Uma Thurman), is about as funny as movies ever get.

Indeed, one would accuse Williams and Reed of stealing the movie outright if it hadn't already been stolen before they could get to it. The thief is young Sarah Polley, just a few short years removed from her successes as an independent movie queen, the clear star of a movie that could have swallowed her without a trace. Unlike many child actors who appear in this kind of thing, who are all too often mush-mouthed, bland presences revealing little understanding of the material around them, Polley displays an emotional sophistication and a mastery of comic timing that render her rather basic viewpoint character every bit as interesting as the over-the-top lunatics played by film's many distinguished adults. Seriously: Their resumes may be longer than she is tall, but she matches the best of them. As a result, her character's innocent bafflement at the orgasmic hyperventilation displayed by the Queen of the Moon, and later much cannier pleasure in informing a jealous Vulcan that the baron is dancing with his wife, are highlights of the film, as impressive in their own way as any of the miraculous special-effects sequences.