Most critics like The Fisher King, and the praise gathers in two places: the performances and Terry Gilliam’s set pieces. Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams are singled out again and again for playing it grounded rather than large, with Mercedes Ruehl and Amanda Plummer close behind. The waltz through Grand Central Station is the scene almost everyone names, and several reviews find the film funnier and more touching than a story about redemption on the streets of Manhattan has any right to be.
The reservations are about shape. Even the warmer reviews call the plot wayward, and the cooler ones go further: Roger Ebert finds it rambling, overlong and arbitrarily twisting, while Slant thinks the script cloying and the sentiment numbing at 138 minutes. The New York Times and Variety sit in between, admiring individual scenes more than the whole and finding the final stretch mechanical. The spread is moderate, with no outright dismissals; notably, the reviews from 1991 are cooler than those written since.