Summary
Kevin’s parents barely notice him between their TV watching and wishing for every new invention being offered to them on TV so when a gang of diminutive, bickering, time-traveling robbers accidentally end up in his room one night he is only too eager to go with.
Fair Warning
I’m not sure when it was or what age I was when I first saw “Time Bandits.” Almost certainly, it’s the first Terry Gilliam film I ever saw at least a small piece of, probably on cable at my Grandma & Grandpa’s house when I was a child. With films like that it is hard to separate nostalgia from objective enjoyment and usually I don’t even try.
Just a fair warning that this review is in no way objective. I love this film, always have, and always will. It is full of flaws, beauty, absurdity, tragedy, laughter and little lessons. Sort of a microcosm of life.
The Film
This movie has all of the trademarks of Gilliam that people love and includes most of them that people don’t love, as well. It isn’t going to wow you with the sense that you just saw Gilliam’s masterpiece but it also isn’t going to be an absolute mess that you aren’t quite sure about. It’s solid fun.
As an introduction to Gilliam you could do a lot worse. For a child’s version of Gilliam you can’t do better as one of Gilliam’s most endearing qualities is his childlike wonder and excitement.
This excitement is not only written into his child protagonist, Kevin (Craig Warnock) but also into the little people he surrounds Kevin with. They bicker and disagree but are always attracted to whatever is new and shiny but they ultimately love and are true to each other. As the cadre of bandits move through time they spend time with Napoleon (Ian Holm, “The Fellowship of the Ring”), Robin of Locksley (John Cleese, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), and Agamemnon (Sean Connery, “The Rock“) but there is a sinister force at work in the world, Evil, and evil wants their precious map which they steal from The Supreme Being.
Evil (David Warner, “Tron”) tempts them into the realm of legends where the past holds no sway and giants, ogres, and other non-historical figures might reside. Once he has the map, he will rewrite history as he sees fit.
The film is split up into a series of vignettes separated by time jumps. Each of these encounters is funny in its own way and I suppose teaches Kevin something important but really they seem more to be about Kevin’s fascination with history. In fact, earlier in the film his dad is shushing him because Kevin wants to recount some of history book to him but Dad just wants to watch a game show.
The way that History works its magic in our lives is one of the central themes of the film and I think also why it is such a good film for kids in their tweens. They are at an age where they are absorbing and learning and as anyone who has ever thought about history knows, learning is simply how we access the past. It’s how we time travel.
In this sense, we have Kevin who loves reading about history but then gets to begin traveling through it. At first he is simply fascinated by it and can’t understand why the dwarfs simply want to raid the past for money. However, he later finds out that he could be a prince alongside Agamemnon if he stays and he really wants to. Eventually he will see that this desire for something different or something more is very akin to Evil’s desire to remake the entire fabric of reality. They are both dissatisfied with what they have and just want to tweak the things they don’t like to varying degrees.
It’s a movie about satisfaction, adventure, wonder, and growing up. It’s about making choices and living with them. It’s about the friends you make as you walk through life, figuring things out as you all go.
It doesn’t hit you over the head with these things the way most kids movie do. It displays them and never says them so outright as I just did and that’s what makes it so accessible to kids. It doesn’t feel like school anymore that and Indiana Jones movie feels like a lesson on WW2.
“Time Bandits” does have its weaknesses though. It has slow sections and the usual meandering quality that Gilliam usually has but I actually think that kids may have an easier time with that than most adults these days. Adults may not find the scenes in this film engaging because we are no longer fascinated by the past and what it has to tell us. We are more interested in the now and the future as exemplified in Kevin’s parents. Kids, on the other hand, don’t find the treasury of the past as boring if it is presented as it is here, as something to be engaged with and explored the same way as you might explore your backyard.
The film has an adult quality and childlike quality that make it perfect for parents and kids to watch together. Lots to talk about but also lots to laugh about and think about. “Time Bandits“ understands that Adults and Children have much to offer each other although many time we adults feel like we have all the answers. “Time Bandits” may not be perfect but for the right audiences it will be a perennial favorite and one of those films which should be revisit just as often if not more so than any of Disney’s remakes.
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