ViewGuide

Created Mar 20, 2014 12:55AM PST • Edited Dec 24, 2014 02:36PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Time hasn’t been kind to The Fisher King, a bum’s view of New York during the doleful Dinkins years. Terry Gilliam’s film of Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay is a dystopian tour through NYC in its Hobbesian pre-Giuliani days. Yes, it’s still a great movie, albeit its whine doesn’t stand the test of time.

   Jeff Bridges plays a pre-Howard Stern shock jock with strong traces of a lefty take on Rush Limbaugh, the man who had just then taken over American talk radio. It’s a savage set-up to take down American excess, complete with major star power and more than a touch of Monty Python-style whimsy. Robin Williams delivers one of his greatest performances as a homeless savant with a fast mind and agile tongue. Natch

   A Christmas Carol reborn on the mean streets of the Big Apple, it is cleverly conceived and constructed, and even comes complete with a catch-phrase. “Hey, forgive me!” Yes, it’s got a lot to recommend it.

   Unfortunately it’s a bit too precious – too affected – and not just because of Robin Williams going full tilt. Still, its a movie brimming with major pleasures.

   • Dancing in the Main Concourse of Grand Central is a terrific scene. Gilliam added it off-script.
   • Robin Williams helping Amanda Plummer in the video store. Classic
   • Great sendup of Big Media

   And yet LaGravenese’s screenplay has serious flaws, as described in the Film Commentary. Then again, who knows. With a Dinkins redux now the New York Mayor, The Fisher King may foretell the future.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Jeff Bridges is iconic as self-centered shock jock Jack Lucas, whose sick encouragement was enough to send a defective follower into an act of horrible violence. Bridges brings his bodacious charisma to the role of Big Media Monster Jock. Jack is simply a monstrously good performance from Lloyd’s son.

   Mercedes Ruehl won an Oscar as his hot-blooded girlfriend. She’s smoking good.

   Robin Williams delivers a canonical Robin Williams role as the brilliant crazy homeless guy. What are we to believe about his utterances? As when he says to Bridges: “I know who you are Jack.” It’s really heavy if he does know. OTOH he may just be crazy. He may not really know Jack.

   Amanda Plummer amazes as his dream girl Lydia. Plummer has to play with the great comedic thespian and does. Extended closeups with Robin Williams at his manic extreme and she plays along perfectly. Wow

   Richard LaGravenese – who wrote The Fisher King – found a cameo for himself as “Strait Jacket Yuppie”

   Other Cameos

   • David Hyde Pierce as Lou Rosen. He doesn’t look like a Lou Rosen.
   • Lara Harris … Sondra
   • Warren Olney … TV Anchorman
   • Frazer Smith … News Reporter
   • Kathy Najimy … Crazed Video Customer
   • Harry Shearer … Sitcom Actor Ben Starr
   • Melinda Culea … Sitcom Wife
   • Mark Bowden … Doorman
   • John Ottavino … Father at Hotel
   • Brian Michaels … Little Boy
   • Jayce Bartok & Dan Futterman as Punks
   • Al Fann … Superintendent
   • Stephen Bridgewater … Porno Customer
   • Chris Howell … Red Knight
   • Michael Jeter … Homeless Cabaret Singer
   • Adam Bryant and Paul Lombardi as Radio Engineers

   Bums

   • Ted Ross … Limo Bum
   • Bradley Gregg … Hippie Bum
   • William Jay Marshall … Jamaican Bum
   • William Preston … John the Bum
   • James Remini … Bum at Hotel
   • John Heffernan … Stockbroker Bum

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Richard LaGravenese’s leftwing fairytale focuses on a mean drunk who gets brought low. Yet he feels sorry only for himself, not for what he did. He learns nothing. He’s still the same self-centered guy.

    Existing in a savage world of Hobbesian urban dysfunction, his journey is a false one, notwithstanding the tragedy attending him and a tacked-on happy ending.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

    “I was nine in the Sixties.” Good Line

13. Music Great 4.0

    Nilsson

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    14 stuntmen make ample mayhem.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.1

    More rude than violent and more violent than sexy reaches the sordid when the sexiness is rather titillating.

17. Sex Titillating 2.4

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.2

    Nevermind the silly surrealism, which is enjoyably entertaining.

    The underlying reality was that by 1991 New York City had suffered under decades of leftwing mayors, almost none of whom took law and order seriously. The Big Apple had become nigh on unlivable under their self-defeating policies. The conventional wisdom was that New York was doomed to forevermore be the world’s biggest village of the damned, the court of The Fisher King.

    It turns out that was a false consciousness however. Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani — aided in a major way by stellar Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — ushered in a new reality, one free first of squeegee men, then of broken windows and ultimately of muggers.

    Now in 2014, a bit more than two decades in the future, New York has elected its first leftwing Mayor since Dinkins. Here’s a question for New Yorkers: Are you feeling lucky?

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Surreal 2.3

24. Physical Glib 1.6