Time Bandits [VHS] [1981]: Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, John Cleese, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, Peter Vaughan, David Warner, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Peter Biziou, Terry Gilliam, Denis O'Brien, George Harrison, Neville C. Thompson: Amazon.co.uk: Video

Amazon.co.uk Review

From a script cowritten with his fellow Monty Python veteran Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam pulled out all the stops on his prodigious imagination for this comedy-fantasy from 1981. Film critic Pauline Kael was right when she wrote, "This may be one of those rare pictures that suffers from a surfeit of good ideas," because there's not enough plot to keep pace with the sheer inventiveness of Gilliam's filmmaking. That hasn't stopped Time Bandits from becoming a classic, of sorts, attracting a cult following as a semi-reunion of the Python gang (with Palin and John Cleese making splendid appearances) and a rousing adventure of near-epic proportions. It's about a kid named Kevin (Craig Warnock) who joins a band of mischievous dwarves on a jaunt through various eras and epochs. They've stolen a map to holes in the space-time continuum that belongs to the Supreme Being (suitably played by Sir Ralph Richardson), and as Kevin survives a variety of heroic adventures, including an encounter with King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) and an Evil Genius (David Warner) who pursues the coveted map using his nefarious magical powers. As a warm-up for Gilliam's later, even more ambitious fantasies, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, this is a dazzling dose of cinematic whimsy, and Gilliam doesn't compromise the darkness of his tale with an artificially upbeat ending. There's as much menace in Time Bandits as there is an awesome sense of wonder, and that gives the movie an extra kick of timeless appeal. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.co.uk Review

With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets.
"The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster.
On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

Timeless 28 Feb 2005

By P. B. Hall

Format:DVD

Time Bandits is a deeply satirical morality tale superficially packaged as a kid's adventure film. On the surface it seems simple enough; a young boy, Kevin, is spirited away by a gang of time travelling comedy dwarves for a series of adventures in different historical settings. But there's a lot more to it than that. Kevin's parents are a grotesque caricature of self-absorbed suburban materialism; incessantly arguing about kitchen appliances while watching brainless TV gameshows at full volume. It is Gilliam's attention to detail which really makes this film for me. Kevin's parents don't eat anything which hasn't come out of a microwave or blender and are too precious even to remove the plastic wrapping from their hideous three-piece suite. Kevin, meanwhile, is a romantic who, until the fateful night the Time Bandits arrive in his bedroom, can only live out his fantasies in history books.

But history turns out not to be all it's cracked up to be. Napoleon is crippled by an inferiority complex stemming from his small stature; Robin Hood is a patronising liar and his 'merry men' are a bunch of violent filthy animals. Only in mythical Greece does Kevin come close to realising his dreams.

The film retains a dark edge throughout. As Gilliam explains in his DVD commentary, by casting small people as the bandits, led by the delightfully arrogant David Rappaport, he hoodwinks the audience into swallowing their extreme cupidity. The innocent Kevin (played by a child actor deliberately selected for his shyness) finds himself swept into company even more mindlessly greedy than that of his parents'. At this stage we are introduced to David Warner's deliciously over-acted 'evil genius'; a Satan obsessed with modern technology (but, ironically, surrounded by decay and incompetence), who plots to entrap the time travellers. The film gathers momentum towards the inevitable showdown between good and evil but Gilliam leaves this disturbingly inconclusive. God, played by Ralph Richardson as an intimidating schoolmaster, assures us that he is in control but that misery and suffering are all that we can expect ("something to do with free will") and Kevin's troubles have only begun. Ultimately this is a very British film which speaks to lonely idealists everywhere.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

One of the best kid's movies ever 11 July 2001

By M. Horne

Format:VHS Tape

This was my favourite film as a kid and I still love it as an adult. It has some spectacular visual sequences. It's a trully wonderful film with ton's of stuff to feed your dreams. Their is more creativity in one scene than the entirety of most other movies. The ending is great and easily the most memorable one when you're a child. The part with John Cleese as Robin Hood has to be one of the funniest scenes in film history. If you haven't seen this film, then you must do so NOW.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

"I like little things, hitting each other." 30 Mar 2004

By A Customer

Since the time of its release this film was panned for not being as funny as it should. This film was at the time promoted as a kind Monty Python sequel due to the involvement of key members of the Python team.

But Time Bandits really isn’t a comedy; it is much more of children’s adventure. Time Bandits can be compared (very favourably) to films like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. The films strengths lies not in its laughs (though there are some) but in its stunning visuals and its anything-goes wild imagination. As a piece of cinema it is stunning and it rivals, in terms of vision any big budget sci-fi film you can care to mention. After watching this film I felt that some of the imagery it produced was burned into my memory.

The best way to view this film is like a colourful children’s book brought to life and on those terms it succeeds with zest.