I realize, after watching this, that I have a special mental category for Gilliam, Del Toro, and Burton. All three of them, I get the sense that I understand what sort of movie it is they are trying to make, and I want to see that movie so I’ll see pretty much anything they do, but I don’t think any of them have quite reached their Platonic ideal. I think Gilliam has actually come the closest of the three (with Time Bandits), but Imaginarium is probably the most Gilliam-y thing I’ve seen from him in quite a while (particularly that scene with the policeman’s chorus line).

The whole thing’s kind of a mess, and I’m not sure losing Ledger mid-shoot is really to blame (the swapping out of other actors in the CGI-scenes seemed more natural than I would have guessed). The CGI is certainly part of the problem. Cheap CGI looks a lot less personal and compelling that cheap model work, and I’m not sure it’s really a great match for Gilliam’s aesthetic. Even setting that aside, there’s the issue that I’m not entirely sure what this movie was about. Parnassus won a series of bets with the devil based on people choosing imagination over something? In most of the scenes where people were choosing one thing over another, I couldn’t figure out which choice represented which side. Maybe I shouldn’t really complain about a movie not ploddingly explaining every little detail, but there was a bit of a clarity issue here. On the other hand, it did give the whole film I kind of fuzzy quality that kind of worked, so maybe it was entirely deliberate.