Time Bandits
A quality childrenâs film is not always exactly quality family entertainment, such as the ones where the kids drag the parents to see the latest G rated sensation so that the little tykes can bob up and down happily while the poor parents are bobbing their heads up and down because the film is so dumb that itâs literally boring them to sleep. No, real quality childrenâs films are the ones where kids can love it while the adults can too due to the high level of intelligent sophistication in the whole enterprise and which are perhaps the toughest standards of filmmaking imaginable where the writers and director are probably the type of guys who use cuss words and lust after women in real life just like all the rest of us do too. In 1981, Terry Gilliam managed to come up with one of the best examples of this in his much maligned career (mostly for overspending during his productions), a mostly delightful time travel fantasy adventure with the major conceit being that the stars of the film were literally a wide eyed little boy along with a gaggle of dwarves played by the best midget actors in the business at that time (mostly to give the child actor a number of equals at least in stature to help him carry the film with) replete with a large array of cameos from some major big name stars to top it all off. In some ways this is almost kind of a pseudo Monty Python film with Gilliamâs old Python bandmate Michael Palin co-writing the script with him and along with John Cleese, also appearing in the film as well. Thatâs why itâs rather humorous that the filmâs opening credits feature the big name cameos being billed as if theyâre the stars while the boy and the midgets (the true, actual stars of the movie) are billed prominently at the beginning of the ending credits instead. The boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) is introduced first, living with his parents who seem inordinately preoccupied with major appliances and blasting the TV watching game shows while always telling him to keep the noise down. One night while in bed, Kevin suddenly experiences a knight on horseback bursting from his closet and through his room before the six little guys finally emerge. Turns out that they have stolen a special map from The Supreme Being (God) that shows the flaws in the universe where a number of âtime portalsâ that can open and close at any given moment are located and wouldnât you know it, Kevinâs bedroom just happens to be one of them. They manage to find the way out just as Supreme Being shows up to chastise them and take Kevin along for the ride, a dizzying trek across different time periods and historical events with the intention of turning it into a cross dimensional robbery spree in order to make themselves rich. See, the dwarves used to work for Supreme Being doing such little things as trees and shrubs so that their boss could concentrate on the more important things but, feeling that they were overworked and underappreciated for their efforts, decided to steal the map of the universe instead and use it for their own gain in order to get what they feel is what they really deserve. This also begs the question (along with subtle little clues along the way) that the work done on creating the universe had just been completed right before the theft of the map itself and thus also subtlely implied that the entire history of mankind had also been completely planned out and was (and still is) playing out just as it had been previously determined. Keeping tabs on these little guys the whole time is what amounts to being The Spirit Of Evil as played by David Warner, supposedly trapped in a fortress in an indeterminable location who has intentions to get his hands on the map for himself in order to undo Creation and remake the world to his own liking (particularly in utilizing the advantages of advanced technology right from the start). Warner (the most sizable and important of the big name roles in the film) has a lot of fun with this comically malicious incarnation of Evil, indiscrimately blasting his own henchmen for even the slightest of offenses all while raving about computers and other things that make the world great (in his opinion) and wondering aloud about how The Supreme Being could be so quaint and small minded in his thinking when it comes to His ideas of what constitutes Creation. Meanwhile The Bandits continue their fast paced, manic run through the portals of time and space, encountering in their travels an insecure Napoleon (Ian Holm), a jovial Robin Hood (Cleese), an unlucky romantic couple in two different time periods (Palin and Shelley Duvall), the imposing King Agamemnon (Sean Connery), an Ogre and his wife (Peter Vaughan and Katherine Helmond), and finally during the climax, The Supreme Being Himself hilariously underplayed by Ralph Richardson in his human looking form (âWell, arenât I the nice one.â). Of all the segments, Conneryâs seems the most meandering and dragged out with its idea that he wishes to adopt the boy (which the boy is just fine with) before he is rescued by the other Bandits even as the whole thing seems to carry some deeper meaning that never actually materializes (save for Connery popping up at the end which also doesnât make sense). On the other hand, Cleeseâs three minute bit as Hood is absolutely hilarious with him talking openly about âredistribution of wealthâ (rob from the rich and give to the poor) as he happily relieves The Bandits of their loot so far in order to do just that, albeit every poor person that receives a free handout also gets a hard punch to the face as well (just keeping it real for them it seems). As for the actual stars, they all managed to acquit themselves very well here, with Warnock as the kid not acting goony or otherwise falling into the myriad of pitfalls that child actors so often do in their performances but rather coming off instead as being likable, soft spoken and intelligent as his character should be. As the leader of the six pack of dwarves, David Rappaport (in that day and age before Peter Dinklage, the most well known and often working midget actor around who compiled a long resume of acting credits before his tragic suicide at a young age which actually derailed Gilliamâs plans for a sequel) as Randall does a fine job of bringing both acting chops and charisma to the enterprise as the little guysâ constant arguing and squabbling becomes the primary source for much of the filmâs humor, with the other Bandits including Kenny Baker (yes, THAT Kenny Baker a.k.a. R2-D2 from Star Wars in a rare role showing his face onscreen), Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis, and Tiny Ross, all bumbling around with heavy amounts of physical slapstick (and most importantly never being betrayed by either Gilliam or the script as just being mere plot devices) and humorous dialogue that have kept this filmâs longstanding popularity (at the very least on a cult level) enduring for many decades to come. Some of the ideas bandied about here are actually pretty interesting, the most prominent one being the possibility of The Bandits having been ALLOWED to steal the map and wreak the havoc that they do as a sort of experiment which God was monitoring the whole time and more importantly, to test out the depths of true Evil (as embodied by Warnerâs character) only for us to find out that the necessity of having Evil even so much as exist in our own world âhas something to do with free willâ even as the kid is ultimately sent back to his own time and place in order to âkeep up the fightâ (whatever that means). Which brings us to admittedly the biggest problem with the film itself, that being the final, ending scene which Gilliam reportedly fought to have remain in the movie but nonetheless comes across as being so downbeat, so unnecessarily grim (even as itâs almost played off as a joke) that one wonders if Gilliam really couldnât come up with something at least a little more CLEVER than that, tarnishing what was otherwise a fantastically entertaining piece and thus keeping it just this shy from a true masterpiece level. But in the end, what some people donât like other people usually enjoy, and there is little dispute that at some point in this film there is at least something that everyone can find either funny, witty, deep or transcendent, which is why the real classics are the ones that keep us coming back for moreâŚ
8/10