Terry Gilliam is a man not unused to trials and tribulations. After all, this is the guy who over the course of a long and colourful career has battled studio interference, budgetary constraints, sickness, acts of God and extraordinary bad luck, and yet consistently manages to endure (except perhaps for his ill-fated flick The Man Who Killed Don Quixote) and even occasionally flourish in the face of adversity.

He has proved time and time again to be the film-making equivalent of a rubber ball - he keeps bouncing back no matter what life throws at him - but it seemed unlikely that even he would endure after the tragic and untimely death of Heath Ledger. Of course, we should have known better, as keep on truckin' he did - with a little help from his friends and some Gilliam-esque ingenuity that is.

Ledger passed on before the final scenes of what would turn out to be his final movie were shot, but Gilliam's old buddies Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law stepped in at the 11th hour to play three differing aspects of Ledger's character and, in an ironic twist that clearly hasn’t been lost on the director, brought with them depths of personality that manage to save what could have possibly been an extraordinarily imaginative but ultimately vacuous folly.

Set in contemporary London, the movie follows the tale of Christopher Plummer’s titular mystic as he ekes out a living on the road with his young daughter (Lily Cole in a revelatory performance), helper Anton (a brilliant Andrew Garfield) and trusted advisor Percy (a fine showing from Verne Troyer). As it turns out, the good doctor has lived an extraordinarily long life after winning a wager with the devilish Mr. Nick (Tom Waits on hammy form) but at a price: when his daughter hits her 16th birthday, she becomes the property of his hellish nemesis.

Now, with the help of a magic mirror that allows people to explore their imagination and a shady young amnesiac named Tony (Ledger), he hopes to find a loophole in the infernal contract.

With a setup that allows for unrestrained flights of (CGI-fuelled) fancy and a game cast who clearly trust their director with his extraordinary vision, this very nearly lives up to its outlandish promise. From the opening shot of The Imaginarium - all faded Victoriana and smoke 'n' mirrors - setting up shop outside a dodgy London club to the special effects-ridden finale, it takes us on a journey that, while clearly unsure of itself and suffering from the loss of its star, somehow retains that all important sense of magic.

At times very brilliant, at other times very messy, it’s a flawed film and perhaps not the majestic swansong that Ledger fans were hoping for (ah well, we’ll always have The Joker), but as a tribute to endurance in the face of adversity and the importance of telling a story, no matter how difficult the telling, Doctor Parnassus is nigh-on unbeatable.

Glen Ferris