The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Massive failure of 80's cinema

While $45 million dollars a budget is peanuts in today's world, in 1988 this was considered borderline madness. It hurts even more when a movie that was so heavily promoted absolutely bombs at the box office in a time when that is absolutely essential for success.

It's even worse when the movie that bombs is actually wildly entertaining and that is how I felt about this movie back then, and also now.

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I would imagine that most people, even those that were alive in 1988, are unaware that this film even exists but if you want to see something completely wacky and pretty damn impressive visually speaking considering the time-period, it could be something worth looking up.

The film is ridiculous and this was intentional. However, it seems as though audiences in 1988 didn't appreciate such a silly film and well, they avoided it at the cinemas like crazy. It failed to even crack 10 million in revenue and is considered one of the biggest flops of the entire decade.

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I will admit that they kind of put themselves in a strange situation where they didn't really have a target audience because the film was downright creepy at times whilst still being silly, therefore it wasn't really appropriate for children, nor was it going to appeal to a lot of adults. Combine this with the fact that a lot of the actors involved were not very well-known by Americans and you have a recipe for financial disaster.

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_{Is it a sound stage? Is it a actual outdoor scene? It's actually quite difficult to tell throughout the film}

The fact that almost no one went to go see this film is extra difficult to understand when you consider that highly-regarded professional critics at the time, including the famed Robert Ebert were giving it high marks. Even today this film has a very high rating on all the major review sites.

Later, the film would be nominated for a whole slew of awards, including BAFTA's and Oscars. It didn't win any awards except for the BAFTA's but still, it's an honor just being nominated, right? I think that is what they say.

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If you don't like the impossible idea of someone grabbing onto a cannonball and then flying much further into the distance than a cannonball is capable of flying well I don't know what to tell you, you probably aren't very much fun in conversations.

For me, I was actually quite astounded to find out that this movie did poorly because I didn't concern myself with such things in my youth, I just know that I really enjoyed it and don't understand why other people didn't. Columbia Pictures took a big hit with the near $40 million loss on this release but it remains a cult classic that many people, including me, absolutely love.

Should I watch it?

It should be evident from what I wrote above that I highly recommend this film especially if you ever appreciated the kind of humor that is akin to Monty Python. Why this film did so poorly remains a mystery to most people and if I had to guess one factor, I can only think that the title was a bit poor. Other than that, i think this is a wild ride and since there is a really good chance that most people haven't seen it, that is a problem that I think you should rectify as soon as possible.

_{This film isn't actually available on Netflix, but I'm sure you can find it elsewhere if you try just a little bit}