Amazon.com Essentials:
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), an Evil
Genius (David Warner) 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
