While technically his third feature film as director, Terry Gilliam’s 1981 Time Bandits was only his second outside of Monty Python and, in most fans’ eyes, the first that truly marked him as an auteur in his own right. As a surprise box office smash (a top-ten money earner for the year on the short-list with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman II – though well below either of those two), the scrappy fantasy-adventure was also one of the very few unqualified successes in a long and frequently troubled career for the filmmaker.
With a screenplay co-written by Michael Palin, and on-screen appearances by both Palin and John Cleese, Time Bandits is by no means completely divorced from the Python ouevre. The movie’s comedic sensibilities, episodic structure, and occasional lapses into what feel like sketch comedy bits are all clear extensions of some of the men behind Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yet Time Bandits is a much more ambitious work of imagination and storytelling. It may not be my favorite Gilliam movie but, far more than Holy Grail or Jabberwocky, this is the launching pad that set the course for everything the director would make afterwards.
| Title: | Time Bandits |
| Year of Release: | 1981 |
| Director: | Terry Gilliam |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Available On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Max The Criterion Channel Various VOD purchase and rental platforms |
The film opens with the sort of broad satire of modern consumerist culture that Gilliam would explore more thoroughly later in Brazil. In then-contemporary 1980s suburban England, a very intelligent young boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) is obsessed with studying history, much to the annoyance of his boorish parents, who can’t be bothered to pay attention to him over the distractions of poring through the latest product catalogs that came in the mail and watching their favorite inane game show on TV.
Taking a page from C.S. Lewis, Kevin discovers one night that the wardrobe in his bedroom is a fantastical portal to other realms. Specifically in this case, it’s a “time hole” in the fabric of the universe, through which he may travel to ancient history. He learns this after being invaded by a ragtag group of diminutive thieves, who’ve stolen a map of the universe from the Supreme Being, in order to use it to travel through time and plunder various historical periods of their precious treasures. While Kevin may not approve of robbery, he nonetheless gets roped into this band of misifts and finds himself caught in a wild adventure through time, jumping to the French Revolution, the Middle Ages, ancient Greece, and more while trying to find his way back home. All the while, these so-called Time Bandits are themselves pursued by the singular embodiment of Evil (David Warner), who wants the map for his own purposes.
Among the historical figures (some real, some possibly not) the Bandits run into are Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese), and Agamemnon (Sean Connery). Michael Palin and Shelley Duvall (R.I.P.) also recur in multiple time periods as a pair of star-crossed lovers whose romance is repeatedly interrupted by the Bandits’ shenanigans. Notably, no matter where in the world or in time they go to, everyone speaks English – a plot hole that’s only possibly addressed depending on how you read the film’s climax.
Because the director wished to film this story from a child’s perspective looking up at the world, he cast all of the Bandits with little person performers, including David Rappaport as leader Randall and Kenny Baker (the actor inside Star Wars‘ R2-D2) as Fidgit. (The new Apple TV+ reboot series has chosen not to replicate this aspect of the concept.) Gilliam was careful to do this in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative. Although goofy characters, the Bandits are all colorful, charismatic, and appealing antiheroes – and their heights are only used for humor in the Napoleon segment, more at his expense than theirs.
As much as Time Bandits is ostensibly a children’s adventure film, it may be a little too weird and off-putting for actual child viewers. I find it best appreciated by existing adult fans of Monty Python or of Terry Gilliam’s later work. Even to that end, the movie still feels like a formative effort. The tone veers wildly from scene-to-scene, with some actors (Connery) taking the material quite seriously and others (Cleese, Duvall) playing it as wacky screwball comedy, as if they were in different movies entirely.
I like Time Bandits a lot and still find the movie very enjoyable, but I think Gilliam would get a better handle on both his artistry and his ability to navigate difficult tonal swings by the time he made Brazil in 1985.
The Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection has long championed Terry Gilliam and has released most of his films on home video over the years. Time Bandits first joined the Collection back in 1998 on the Laserdisc format. A DVD followed in 1999, and a Blu-ray later in 2014, both listed under spine #37. Most recently, the label reissued the film in 2023 on 4K Ultra HD.
In my enthusiasm as a Gilliam fan, I bought the 2014 Blu-ray not long after it was released. However, like far too many of my Criterion purchases, it wound up sitting unwatched on my movie shelf for many years afterward. When the 4K edition became available, I had to resist my instinct to immediately upgrade. In fact, as I perused the shelves at my local Barnes & Noble during the most recent Criterion sale, I very well might have picked up a copy if only the store had any left in stock.
Ultimately, I think that’s for the best. As I’ve written in the past, the relentless upgrade cycle from one format to the next has diminishing returns at a certain point, and a good Blu-ray is still a very satisfying viewing experience.
According to the liner notes provided at the time, Criterion’s 2014 Blu-ray was sourced from a video master licensed from Arrow Films, based on a 2K scan of the Original Camera Negative and supervised by Terry Gilliam. The 1.85:1 image is a little soft and often quite grainy, but those traits seem to be inherent to the film. Despite the haziness of the photography, detail and clarity are strong and colors are very nice.
Does the newer 4K remaster (also supervised by Gilliam) offer an appreciable improvement over this disc? That’s entirely possible, and some other reviews I glanced at suggest as much, but Time Bandits was always a rather slapdash production and I feel that this Blu-ray still does a very good job of representing it. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to watching it, I no longer feel overly compelled to replace the disc.
The film’s Dolby Stereo soundtrack is encoded in uncompressed PCM 2.0 format. From what I can tell, this is a true stereo mix without any intentional surround cues. I nevertheless left my A/V receiver at its default of applying the Dolby Surround Upmixer and found that most of the movie sounded very thin. On my system, I got better results switching to plain Stereo, but I can’t rule out that being a hardware- or setting-specific issue on my end. Even having made that change, sound effects are frequently a little bright. On the other hand, music is reasonably robust and the sound of the giant stomping delivers some nice reverberation.
The centerpiece of Criterion’s supplement package is an audio commentary from 1997 compiled together from separate recording sessions with Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, John Cleese, David Warner, and Craig Warnock. Also included are a 24-minute retrospective featurette on the movie, a 20-minute film festival panel interview with Terry Gilliam, a 9-minute 1981 TV interview clip with actress Shelley Duvall, a photo gallery, and a trailer. The enclosed booklet folds out into a reproduction of the map of the universe, and features an essay from film critic David Sterritt.
Early copies of the Criterion Blu-ray came packaged with a lenticular slipcover over the keepcase. Mine unfortunately has developed some warping that messes up the 3D effect.
Related
- Sean Connery
- David Warner
- Time travel theme
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