Directed by Terry Gilliam

Can there be a more exasperating director around than Terry Gilliam? He can give us, as almost no-one else can, such a gourmet feast of visual extravaganza, a genuine frisson of other worldliness, or rather a revisioning of our own world, a child-like delight in glitter and colour and delicious darkness and fun... so why after all his films, and disappointingly this one was one of the worst offenders, is there a feeling of almost anger at the end, that all of this amounted to nothing.

Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is an ages-old Prospero-esque magician who runs a gaudy, grubby, yet still magical Victorian-style travelling theatre, the Imaginarium, upon entering which people live out their hidden dreams and innermost thoughts. Some time ago the doctor entered into a Faustian pact with the devil (imaginatively named Mr Nick) played by a pencil-moustached and hugely-enjoying-himself Tom Waits. The deal seems to keep changing its ground throughout, but the stake is the soul of the doctor's daughter Valentina when she reaches the age of 16. Lily Cole as Valentina is one of the best things in the film, acting convincingly when all around are mugging in the usual Gilliam fashion, her unearthly features straight out of an Arthur Rackham storybook.

Of course, the greatest talking point about this film is the death of Heath Ledger during its making. And it has to be said that the use of three other actors to play different aspects of his character, made explicable by the transformational capabilities of the Imaginarium, is a stroke of genius (and a good deal more comprehensible than lots of the rest of the mix). He is Tony, an enigmatic, charming rogue who is saved by Valentina and her besotted admirer and co-worker Martin (Richard Riddell) from hanging, Roberto Calvi fashion, under a bridge over the Thames. I have to say that his character as played by Ledger is not as charismatic as I suspect we were meant to find it, and the three later transmogrifications, as Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, are actually more enjoyable and, dare I say it, better executed. Ledger has done so many better things in his brief career.

From its beginning in an almost contemporary London of sinister decrepitude and shadows, much of it filmed in the crumbling Battersea Power Station, the film is a luscious visual masterpiece. But from the outset there's a deal too much shouting, falling over and frenzy, all the usual Gilliam staples, including the obligatory comically straight-talking dwarf - Verne Troyer is excellent, but it's as if a dwarf is Gilliam shorthand for ‘look how whacky I can be'. And the heart, having sunk several times at old routines and then been resuscitated again by a wonderful image or funny line, sinks, for me, beyond the reach of defibrillation when a Monty Python type line-up of dancing policemen in black tights is exhumed. It's actually embarrassing to watch. The plot lurches on without even seeming to try to make sense, scarcely anyone allowed to finish a sentence before the frenzied action is up and at 'em again.

For Gilliam fans it will be a treat; but delightful though in parts it is, at the end the harder hearts among us are left feeling short-changed by the directionless feel to it all. Roller coasters are fun, but you want to know that the thing is on a track and that you will get to an end at some point and know where you are. Gilliam has said that he approaches film making by letting the film find itself - somewhere there is the platonic ideal of the film, the one he produces is the nearest approximation he can achieve. But a little Aristotelian order wouldn't come amiss. Fun and sensory pleasure are one thing, and a big thing at that, but you long for a decent plot trajectory, and it leaves you in the end frustrated that his splendid cinematic talents aren't accompanied by less simplistic and more grown-up ideas.

Seen at Cinemas Days, Empire Cinema, Rubery, Birmingham, 3 October 2009