This film is Director Terry Gilliam's best for one simple reason: it is his most successful marriage of modern story to mythic content.  Just as the first three Star Wars movies (Episodes IV-VI) succeeded in captivating the hearts and minds of its viewers on a deep, spiritual level amidst the revolutionary special effects, Gilliam has taken a segment of New York city's extremes and has recasted the Holy Grail adventure in modern, well-tailored clothes.  This movie serves as, perhaps, the best motion picture example of the Jungian theory of individuation I have seen.  The main characters map nicely to the ego-shadow-anima trio with Jack (Jeff Bridges) playing an ego maniac who suffers a Icarian fall and is brought to face his shadow, Perry (Robin Williams), who is anything but egotistical and selfish.  Providing both support and unintentionally inhibiting his progress is his anima/mother figure of a girlfriend Anne (Mercedes Ruehl) whom he must grow both toward and away from as any immature young man must do as he learns to see his significant other as not a replacement mother but soulmate.  But Perry and Anne are also not just projections, but characters with their own depth and complexity each developing a relationship with the other in significant, plot building ways.  Moreso than in any of Gilliam's other films is the stories' plot capable of producing a successful vehicle for Gilliam's well-known propensity for complexity that normally tends to muddy the focus of his efforts to the detriment of the film.