Despite this, it received positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.

Over the complaints of the audience, the theatre company and Jackson, the "real" Baron gains the house's attention and narrates through flashback an account of one of his adventures, of a life-or-death wager with the Grand Turk, in which the younger Baron's life is saved only by his amazing luck, plus the assistance of his remarkable associates: Berthold, the world's fastest runner; Adolphus, a rifleman with superhuman eyesight; Gustavus, who possesses extraordinary hearing and powerful lungs; and the fantastically strong Albrecht.

The Baron wanders backstage, where the Angel of Death tries to take his life, but Sally Salt, the young daughter of the theatre company's leader, saves him and persuades him to remain living.

The Baron accidentally fires himself through the sky using a mortar, and returns riding a cannonball, narrowly escaping the Angel of Death again.

The death of the King's body and a bungled escape from the Moon bring the trio back to the Earth and into the volcano of the Roman god, Vulcan.

Swallowed by an enormous sea creature, the travellers locate Gustavus, Adolphus and the Baron's trusty horse, Bucephalus.

They escape by blowing "a modicum of snuff" into the sea creature's cavernous interior, causing it to sneeze the heroes out through its whale-like blowhole.

His companions rally to save the Baron, and, through a series of fantastic acts, they rout the Turkish army and liberate the city.

An emotional public funeral takes place, but the denouement reveals that this is merely the final scene of yet another story that the Baron is telling to the same theatregoers in the city.

The Baron calls the foregoing "only one of the many occasions on which I met my death", and closes his tale by saying that "everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after".

[10] Gilliam explained, "The one theme that runs through all three of these pictures is a consistently serious battle between fantasy and what people perceive as reality.

"[16] Production designer Dante Ferretti afterwards compared Gilliam to his former director, saying, "Terry is very similar to Fellini in spirit.

"[12] When The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was finally completed, David Puttnam, who had obtained the film's US distribution rights for Columbia Pictures, had been replaced as CEO of Columbia; coupled with Gilliam's prior quarrels with major studios over Brazil, the film was given limited distribution in the United States.

Their lawyer was a guy named Steve Ransohoff, whose father was Martin Ransohoff—who was Ray Stark's friend and partner.

And what happened—to complete the story in a neat and tidy way—was that they were not spending any money on advertising to promote any of the movies started by the previous regime—by Putnam's regime.

A friend who had bought the video rights said he had never seen anything so weird—Columbia was spending their whole time looking at exit polls to prove the film would not work in the suburbs, and so it would be pointless to make any more prints.

"[22] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

"[24] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4, and found that it was "told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them", appreciating "the sly wit and satire that sneaks in here and there from director Terry Gilliam and his collaborators, who were mostly forged in the mill of Monty Python".

Ebert concluded, "This is a vast and commodious work... the wit and the spectacle of Baron Munchausen are considerable achievements."

Additionally, he considered John Neville's title role performance as appearing "sensible and matter-of-fact, as anyone would if they had spent a lifetime growing accustomed to the incredible".

[25] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called the film a "wondrous feat of imagination", although, "except for Williams, the actors are never more than a detail in Gilliam's compositions".

[26] Richard Corliss of Time wrote, "Everything about Munchausen deserves exclamation points, and not just to clear the air of the odor of corporate flop sweat.

"[27] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "consistently imaginative" and a "spectacle [that] is indeed spectacular and worth the admission price and patches of boredom".

It included a new commentary with Gilliam and co-writer/actor McKeown, a three-part documentary on the making of the film, storyboard sequences, and deleted scenes.