Terry Gilliam is indispensable to the world of movies. He’s a director with such unique vision and directorial capability that camera angles have been named after him. Most specifically, a form of deep focus perspective distortion that imbues his films with a curved feel, as if the audience is peering at his actors and visuals through a door’s peephole. Gilliam also hates maudlin happy endings, and most of his classic works, from Brazil to Twelve Monkeys, feature incredibly depressing endings. Heroes die, bureaucratic societies win, plots dissect and recombine in chronological chimeras, and the future is always a bleak anus of a place. Yet, once the viewing of the movie has concluded, and the downbeat ending sinks in, a feeling of completion follows, because throughout Gilliam’s films, splendor and moments of triumph do exist.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus suffers as Gilliam’s recent films have, from the flawed-but-decent Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to failures such as The Brothers Grimm, suffer. There’s a lot of vision, and a lot of surreal wonder. There’s even a fantasy world Tim Burton would turn Beetlejuice green with jealousy over, located behind a “magic,” yet still magic mirror located in a theater troupe’s wagon.

The theater troupe is built around Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his goofy band of performers, among them his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and Anton, the magician boy that loves her (Andrew Garfield). Oh, and Percy the midget sidekick (Verne Troyer), who is too often the butt of a joke. Their traveling freak carnival-meets-magic show is interrupted by two odd things: Mr. Nick (musician Tom Waits), a devil figure who the good doctor owes a debt to, and the magic mirror, which transports those who travel through into a hyperactive dream-world of imagination, a combination of Beetlejuice’s Nether World and Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland filtered through the chocolate river tunnel in the original Willy Wonka movie.

Dr. Parnassus has made a deal with Mr. Nick, or Satan, that involves living forever in exchange for capturing souls. If Parnassus fails, his daughter dies on her 16th birthday, which is three days from when we are uncomfortably thrust in the midst of this chaotic story.

The troupe comes across a man attempting to hang himself under a bridge, who when saved, hacks up a golden flute. Points for effort. This man, later revealed to be named Tony, is played by the late Heath Ledger. It’s a shame The Dark Knight couldn’t have been the last film we saw Ledger in. Here he has to mumble through a British accent, and no one knows who he really is or if he’s lying about it. Valentina falls for him, Anton gets jealous, etc. The movie is so convoluted that it is difficult to follow the plot and subsequently, care for the characters. The random scenes inside the Imaginarium confuse more than anything, and Gilliam’s penchant for wacky plots and jarring scene order is finally his undoing.

Lastly, when Tony enters the Imaginarium, running from Russian mobsters, who make perfect sense amidst the psychotic episodes occurring regularly on camera, he changes shape and form to look awfully like Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, respectively. The plot states that it has to do with imagination reflecting sides of one’s personality in various…yawn…manifestations…but it’s apparent that the audience is well aware of Ledger’s death and the contrivance cooked up to handle the matter. This film can at best be recommended to fans of fantasy at any cost.