The life of Bavaria's 'mad' King Ludwig II might have been tailor made for the silver screen, but this mammoth 4-hour long production is recommended only to viewers with superhuman powers of endurance. A patron of the arts and an incurable romantic, Ludwig ascended to the throne in 1864 at the tender age of twenty, where he proceeded to demonstrate his political ignorance and disdain for State affairs by bleeding the treasury dry in the pursuit of pure aesthetic beauty, leading his troubled mind to finally seek refuge in a Wagnerian fantasy of bold, beautiful heroes and sturdy Valkurian maidens. The film was lavishly produced and photographed in and around the fairy tale splendor of Ludwig's Alpine castles, but despite the impressive attention to visual detail the results are (at best) uneven, alternating moments of fascinating historical drama with long stretches of undiluted tedium. A few belated but colorful scenes of royal debauchery (temper tantrums, all-male orgies, etc.) aren't enough to jump start the leaden pace, and the typically haphazard Italian overdubbing holes the film below the waterline from its very first moments.
