Terry Gilliam: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

11. Jabberwocky

Gilliam's first solo feature as director also adopts a 19th century fairy tale as its premise, loosely adapting the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem of the same name and transforming it into a darkly humourous tale of misguided heroics amidst a near-farcical medieval landscape. Python member Michael Palin stars as Dennis Cooper, a typically witless protagonist who stumbles from one scenario to the next, too dumb and clueless to be the architect of his own fate (Palin is perfectly cast in this role, all dumb stupefaction and head-scratching bemusement). As the titular beast terrorizes the medieval town, corrupt officials profit from their fear while religious fanatics catapult themselves into walls, all in the midst of copious amounts of mud, filth and fog. Inevitably, Dennis winds up unwittingly facing off against the Jabberwocky and defeating it less through his own skill and bravery than through a large stroke of good luck. Jabberwocky is nothing if not silly fun, and already Gilliam's visual style and thematic obsessions can be seen emerging. It's also perhaps his funniest films, much in keeping with the comedy of Monty Python - indeed, some of the locations and costumes appear to have been lifted directly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, just as some of the gags and slapstick humour could be mistaken for outtakes from the Python movie. Gilliam was, of course, none too happy with the marketing team in America associating the movie directly with Monty Python for its premiere, but in a sense it can be viewed as a half-way house - albeit a thoroughly entertaining one - between Terry Gilliam member of the Python troupe and Terry Gilliam the auteur.