Dr. Parnassus - the Doctor of Weird

My cousin and I went to the movies last night. We had seen all the chick flicks that were out, so we decided to see something a little different - Terry Gilliam's new vehicle and Heath Ledger's last film - The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. From all of the previews we had seen, this looked like yet another creepy but wonder-filled movie from the guy who brought us all of those LSD-infused cartoons from Monty Python.

Boy, I was not wrong.

I have never been more bored and more confused at the same time. The movie took way too long to develop. I was astonished when I looked down at my watch, thinking that the movie must be almost over, to find that I was only 45 minutes in. And yet the plot kept twisting and turning so I never knew what was going next. It felt like the movie never got it's footing, and kept faltering back from one plot to the next, all the while engulfing the audience in this "imaginarium" that seemed nothing more than a bad mushroom trip.

The plot, as far as I could determine it was - Dr. Parnassus, played by Christopher Plummer, is an immortal wizard of sorts who travels around London, engaging usually drunk teenagers to enter into his imaginarium through a magical mirror. When they do, they have a choice between purity and the Devil, played by the ever creepy and intriguing Tom Waits. Dr. Parnassus and the Devil are betting men, and the prize is Parnassus's daughter, a 16-year-old beauty played by Lily Cole and adds way too many uncomfortable statutory undertones to the movie. When Parnassus and his team rescue Heath Ledger's character, he promises to help them "modernize" the show, all the while inciting the lust of Parnassus' daughter.

That's only the basics of the plot. To be honest, I'm surprised I made that much sense of it. Gilliam spent too much time on unimportant side plots, and failed to develop the more fascinating plots. I was left with a sense of disappointment that many of the key questions raised in the story were unsolved, while many other trivial points were beated to death by too much exposition and dialogue.

Don't go see this movie. It's odd, boring, and it made me completely unable to fall asleep, as I pondered what the hell Gilliam must have been smoking to think that this made a plausible film. I'm also wholey disappointed that this was Heath Ledger's last film. He should have gone out with a bang, not a whimper. This could have been a great film, if only it was done completely differently.