The 80's Goes Monty-Pythonish: Time Bandits

A Cult Film of the 1980's, Time Bandits is the brainchild of Monty-Python actor Terry Gilliam. The films uses well-established actors, such as Sean Connery and (naturally) John Cleese. It is less random in execution than Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail but no less surprising! Time Bandits is Gilliam's first in what is considered to be a loose trilogy of films all released in the 80's, sometimes called The "Imagination," "Dreamer," and "Flights of Fancy" Trilogy, which also included Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Von Munchhausen. 

MIKE SAYS Terry Gilliam really embodies the idea of this list. From his strangely dark humor to his "more magic than science" sci-fi, Gilliam crafted three 80's cult classics that helped define exactly what "strange" was in a very strange decade. Throw in some recurring 80's themes, such as a fascination with Midgets (they were EVERYWHERE), and Game Shows (something we'll see a couple more times in this list), and you have a film that is almost too odd to believe.

The film doesn't wait long to get started.  Within ten minutes Kevin is greeting the bandits and being chased by a giant floating head.  The poor viewers are left scratching their heads till somewhere around the 30 minute mark, where only then does Kevin get some idea of what exactly is going on.

The episodic nature of the film only adds to the weirdness but helps it zip along.  The film provides some great cameos and performances and is completely British in its humor, timing, and structure.

My memories of the film are odd and fragmented, but this isn't surprising given the nature of the film.  Some of the imagery really disturbed me when I was young, highlighting the difference between this and the sanitized children's films we see today.  Despite there being real danger, and some legitimately frightening idea, such as being skewered and roasted for a stew, confronted by a disgustingly slimy Satan, the hero being orphaned by God's absent mindedness, and a family being squashed by a giant, the film handles all of this with a casual humor that borders on being irresponsible.

This doesn't change the fact, however, that the film is massively entertaining, and contains some imagery so vivid, it's stuck with me most of my life. While I watched the film within the last couple years, watching it again for the list is thoroughly enjoyable, especially since there are entire segments that I seem to have forgotten.

The only thing that may have been more entertaining than watching the film is watching the expressions of my wife as she folded the laundry . . . When I finally show Time Bandits to my son, his mom may be conveniently running an errand.

Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs.

KATE SAYS Napoleon recites the measurements of famous generals, Evil is obsessed with computers, and Robin Hood is a glad-handing politician.

I actually quite like Terry Gilliam's view of history. People are good and bad, kind and cruel, odd and foolish. Ultimately, they are just ordinary chicks and blokes worrying about their kitchen appliances. This is best summed up in the scene between Kevin and Agamemnon (who has his own strange and cruel history); after Agamemnon performs a series of magic tricks, Kevin remarks, "Kings aren't supposed to do stuff like that."

In Gilliam's world-view, life plays once as a comedy, once as a tragedy,  and ends with someone to clean up the mess.

As a result, out of all the historical dramas we've watched, this one seems the most real. Forget being profound: life is about back-aches and hair-pieces and magic tricks.  

The use of Kevin (Craig Warnock) is brilliant. Monty-Python skits often got too random for my tastes (I gotta have that narrative arc). Time Bandits succeeds not only because it has a narrative arc (sort of) but because Kevin's point of view draws the seemingly disparate elements together. Not to get too analytical, but making sense out of randomness is how humans survive: we each create our own story using the material at hand. This is not a relativistic argument (except to say that people look at thing relativistically) since what we use to tell our own stories has real, intrinsic value (whatever that value might be), no matter what we may do with it. In the end, pure evil is just, well, pure evil.

Speaking of which, when I saw this movie as a youngster, the ending bugged me. Sure, it's funny, but the kid is left alone. But now, I'm not so sure the ending isn't totally perfect. Kevin is Kevin. He'll survive. He has the map after all. And who can believe that Randall will stay put and not come looking for him?

I guess I've answered the question, Is it all a dream? Of course not! Despite the deliberate counterparts in the "real" world, there are the Polaroids. Kevin is a prince released into a world without restrictions. As all good fantasy writers know, the first thing you do is vanquish the parents.

From now on, things just get realer.