Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) would feel right at home in a studio with Howard Stern or Australia's Alan Jones etcetera. He's a New York City talkback radio shock jock who consciously and unabashedly takes the provocation of that occupation to the Nth degree every night. But after he gives an answer to one question that inspires the caller to open fire in a local bar, he's immediately sacked. Several months later he's now working at a rental store under the eye of his feisty girlfriend Anne (a deservedly Oscar-winning Mercedes Ruehl) until she tires of his lazy, cynical ways and herself throws him out. When he then spends a homeless night under the Brooklyn Bridge, he stops a gang of thugs from attacking Parry (the late but immortal Robin Williams in one of his finest turns), a bona fide eccentric bum who models himself on one of King Arthur's knights - and, oh yes, a man whose wife died in the shooting Jack's radio rant inspired. With practically nothing left but each other, Parry and Jack quickly bond, so much so that Jack even brings him along when Anne re-opens her door for Jack. Now, if only to help his own prospects, Jack sets out to help Parry woo the quiet but sweet Lydia (Amanda Plummer), while they both find some happiness in reality.
Terry Gilliam is unquestionably one of the weirdest filmmakers of our time, by any national industry's standards. After his breakthrough as the American member of Monty Python, he made his directorial name with true exercises in unconventionality like Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). 1991's The Fisher King was something of a step to the mainstream - his idea of "mainstream," that is. Working from Richard LaGravenese's ingeniously genre-blending and sharply plotted screenplay (which deserved the Oscar for which it was nominated), Gilliam's vision here is like My Own Private Idaho (minus the gay element) meets The Princess Bride and it fits both our protagonists' mentalities like a glove. Enhancing this is George Fenton's distinctively quirky score and richly fanciful production design, both also Oscar-nominated.
But it's the cast who conjure up the greatest magic here. Bridges ultimately inspires sympathy for such a tactless wastrel of a man, Ruehl reverts seamlessly between laughs and emotion with remarkable authority, Plummer is beautifully delicate and as a homeless cabaret singer Jack and Parry meet in a shelter and then recruit to play a matchmaker, an hysterical Michael Jeter will make you think only he was even considered for that part. But surely outdoing them all is Williams, in arguably the performance of his career (alongside 2002's One Hour Photo). He fills Parry with such rambunctiousness, worldliness and an underlying fragility that you just can't look away from him. (He was also Oscar-nominated here, but sadly for him this came out the same year as The Silence of the Lambs.) Also look for cameos from Kathy Najimy, Tom Waits and a pre-Frasier David Hyde Pierce.
If I can fault this one in any way, it's that I think it's about twenty minutes overlong. But nonetheless, each time I watch The Fisher King, I always finish it wanting to cast my reel in alongside him.
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