“Well, suicidal paranoiacs will say anything to get laid.”

In the wonderfully askew universe of Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, an errant comment by provocative radio personality Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) causes one of his regular callers to commit a mass murder. Haunted by his role in the event, Jack gives up his shock jock gig and starts working a low-stress job at his girlfriend’s (Mercedes Ruehl) video store even as he grows increasingly despondent. One night on a bender, he decides to end it all by jumping into the Hudson with cinder blocks strapped to his ankles, but his personal doom is averted by a chance encounter with a delusional/inspired homeless man named Parry (Robin Williams), who, it turns out, suffers from a fantastical trauma born of the same tragedy, that sees him talking to unseen “little people” and perpetually evading a fiery Grim Reaper. Though seeking deliverance from entirely different perspectives, the odd couple gradually find in each other a means of liberation and personal redemption—outcomes that are whimsically connected to matchmaking the scruffy and eccentric Parry with the demure girl of his dreams (Amanda Plummer) and stealing the “Holy Grail” out of a business tycoon’s Upper East Side castle. Other momentary delights include Tom Waits as a handicapped subway vagrant and Michael Jeter as a crossdressing singing telegram.

Brilliantly acted and based on a loopy original script from Richard LaGravenese, The Fisher King crosses the finish line with charm, wit, and pathos to spare. For better or worse, however, it often feels as if Gilliam is tempering his peculiar sensibilities in order to vie for commercial appeal. He achieves a fluid blend (to wit, my wife’s sole complaint about it was that she had to lay eyes on Robin Williams’ manhood), and his contrast between crass popular media (talk radio, porno, sitcoms) and timeless mythology, which finds its compromise in classical Hollywood by borrowing ditties from The Philadelphia Story and Babes on Broadway, allows the film to find strange, transcendent catharsis without escaping from its decaying urban setting when Williams and Bridges stargaze and philosophize in the nude in Central Park. A film that sees quirky romance, Arthurian questing, unchecked Robin Williams comedy, and yuppie enlightenment as parts of a whole shouldn’t work as well as The Fisher King does. And to be sure, it’s not the negotiation of these disparate tones that causes the film to falter, but rather its late turn toward the saccharine after an hour and a half of dazzling unpredictability.