#37: Time Bandits
Good morning, friends!
Re: my need for more Tom Hanks content from last week, my sweet friend Ocean turned me on to this podcast called Dead Eyes that has really filled that gap. Check it out!
#37: Time Bandits
Director: Terry Gilliam
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 1981
Runtime: 116 minutes
Language: English
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
CW: Violence, death
I gave myself a few days between watching this movie and writing this review, hoping processing it a bit would make it easier to write about. Haha! No. I feel like it was a fever dream that ended with a faint whisper that said, “No one will believe youuuu…”
Hold on to your butts.
We begin with a British family (mom, dad, adolescent son) watching TV in their living room. The vibe is that it’s either the 1980s or the future, if that makes sense. There’s plastic on their furniture and they’re watching infomercials and a flashy gameshow. The son, Kevin (Craig Warnock) gets up and goes to bed.
Immediately upon closing his eyes, a knight on a horse bursts through his wardrobe and through his bedroom wall. I almost peed my PANTS I was so startled. I really should have known that a nighttime bedroom horse trampling is a sign of a movie that has no chill. Also, it’s time you know that horses make me incredibly emotional just as beings and I don’t have time to get into it right now.
Of course, when Kevin--who also probably peed his knickers--pulls the covers off his head, there’s no sign of the horse having been there.
The next night, Kevin waits with a polaroid camera and a flashlight pointed at his wardrobe, ready for any man or beast to bust through. But sweet Kevin falls asleep waiting. He is soon woken up by 6 little people in various weird costumes (a pilot/jester? A pirate?) piling out of the wardrobe. The little people, all men, are named Randall (David Rappaport), Fidgit (Kenny Baker), Strutter (Malcolm Dixon), Og (Mike Edmonds), Wally (Jack Purvis), and Vermin (Tiny Ross). They are carrying a large, old map.
The men are lost and want Kevin to help them get out and are honestly very rude about it, but he agrees to join them. They push his bedroom wall and it just keeps moving. As they continue to push the wall, a giant Oz-like head chases them telling them to “return the map! It will bring you great danger!”
The wall disappears and they all fall into complete darkness, finally landing in a barn.
Kevin learns that the floating head belongs to the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson) whom the 6 men work for; or, used to work for. It’s complicated as we soon learn.
Kevin tries to run away from the group but instead runs into a group of Italian peasants in the middle of a war. It turns out they are in Italy, 1796, during the Napoleonic Wars. AND it turns out the 6 men chauffeuring/kidnapping Kevin through spacetime, are burglars and they are here to burgle Napoleon himself. I get the vibe that these guys are trying to be incognito but I really can’t stress enough how bonkers their outfits are. Fidgit is wearing a colander on his head.
In order to complete this theft, the men hijack the stage where Napoleon is watching a puppet show. They sing a song and pretend to be an act, but they just end up fighting each other, which Napoleon--probably problematically--loves.
He loves it so much, in fact, that he has them over for dinner alone with him, where he gets wasted and talks about his height and how many other great leaders were as short (or shorter) than him.
When Napoleon passes out, the men raid his dining room which is full of gold and silver and jewels, including Napoleon’s artificial hand which also seems to be made of gold. (This is when I got sucked into a Napoleon wikipedia hole because I felt insecure that I didn’t know he was missing a hand.) One of the men, dressed like a general, is able to get the soldiers guarding the building to turn around on command so the rest of them can sneak out with the loot. They notice their giant bag and chase after them, but the group jumps through a door-shaped portal into the void.
They drop down into the carriage of a rich couple, Vincent (Michael Palin) and Pansy (Shelley Duvall), in the Middle Ages. The couple flees in fear and they’re left with all of the riches. Hey, has there ever been an actress like Shelley Duvall? She truly is one-of-a-kind, right?
This is when Kevin (and I) finally gets the scoop on what is going ON. The men, mostly led by Randall, used to work for the Supreme Being. They helped him create men and women, good and evil, and night and day. They used to repair holes in spacetime but then realized they could instead use these holes to steal people’s riches. With the help of the Supreme Being’s special map (which they stole), they now just bounce around and steal shit. They say they need Kevin’s help but I never understood why.
Kevin takes a Polaroid picture--the first of many on their adventures--of the men with the map.
In this current timeline of the Middle Ages, they meet Robin Hood, hilariously played by John Cleese. This is where the men learn that Robin Hood gives all the riches they steal for the poor and they high-tail it outta there because that’s not really their thing.
The group of thieves doesn’t know it yet, but they are being watched by Evil (David Warner), a malevolent guy who is also dressed outrageously (a little bit Numetal, a little bit Steampunk). Evil is a complete bitch, of course, who annihilates all of his men who question him, especially those who question him for being upset at the Supreme Being. His men argue that he shouldn’t be mad at the Supreme Being because he actually created Evil himself.
Evil wants the map because he wants control of the Universe, which he believes to be mismanaged. “Nipples for men. Slugs. Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?”LOL TRUE. Evil, however, is all about exploring technology: “Lasers. Day one.”
Evil can also control people. He talks through Wally to suggest the group go somewhere else. Unfortunately, his plans are interrupted when the Supreme Being (SB) shows his head to demand the map from the group again.
Two door-shaped portals appear. Kevin goes through the left one and is separated from the group when it closes behind him. He is plopped down into Mycenaean Greece where he meets King Agamemnon, played by Sean Connery, who is being very Sean Connery. The King lets Kevin into his home and puts him into a TINY yellow toga.
I am SO jealous of the King’s blouse. I know a good muslin when I see one!
The King throws a banquet announcing he is adopting Kevin. Okay so no shade to Kevin, but I can’t hold it in anymore--he is incredibly uncharismatic and I don’t understand why he was cast I’M SORRY. We can’t all be Culkins.
At the banquet, a man slices open a full charred and emptied cow carcass to reveal a bunch of fruits, like a pinata. And in the watermelons, there are doves. And in the doves, are a bunch of Tootsie Pops lol jk
There are dancers at the banquet, including guess who! The 6 men dressed in appropriate-for-the-occasion ritual costumes.
The King is enchanted, of course, and lets them take a bunch of jewels and gold, including his crown, as part of their act. They also take Kevin and, using a portal, escape behind a piece of cloth as everyone claps, thinking they’ve just seen a magic trick.
They land on the Titanic, where they all dress up in tuxedos, smoke cigars, and drink champagne. Kevin is bummed they took him away from Greece. I mean, duh. There are few places I’d be sad to leave in order to be on a sinking-ass ship.
Randall tells him they will next be going to The Fortress of Ultimate Darkness to find The Most Fabulous Object in the World.
Of course, the Titanic soon sinks and they’re all stranded and arguing in the frigid sea, hanging on to a piece of wood in a storm. I really am not trying to be funny when I say they all could have fit on that piece of wood. The “storm” is actually Evil creating a whirlpool that the group is getting sucked into. Through the whirlpool, he sends them to The Time of Legends, where Evil is from.
The group is still in the water and they’re caught in the net of an ogre’s ship. His wife (Katherine Helmond) is excited because they’re hungry and going to eat the group. As she prepares her kitchen, Mr. Ogre ( Peter Vaughan) attempts to throw them all in the pot, but his back hurts too much to lift them.
They offer to help him stretch his back and he agrees. Instead, they throw him overboard and knock his wife off, too. The group gets command of the ship, but finds themselves being lifted out of the water. A giant (Ian Muir) stands up under their boat and wears it like a hat.
I feel like I’ve heard of giants before, but this one is VERY big. It felt too big. Isn’t there something about mythical creatures that has to feel a little bit real? I don’t know--humans taller than dinosaurs feels like a bridge too far but maybe I’m just a cranky hag.
The men use a bellows to inject sleeping potion into the giant’s head through the floor of the ship. The giant sits down, takes the ship off his head, and falls asleep. They exit the ship and find The Ultimate Fortress of Darkness, which is just a giant stone maze which leads to a huge fortress, with an empty abyss all around them.
At the end of the maze is the enchanting game show from the beginning of the film, except the game show models are Kevin’s parents. Kevin yells at the 6 men to come back, recognizing it and knowing it’s a trap.
The men are told they only have to hand over the map to get the The Most Fabulous Object in the World. They hand it over to the game show host. Predictably, the host turns into Evil and he traps them all in a cage hovering over oblivion.
Kevin looks through all the photos he took on their adventures. In a photo where the map is visible, they see that their current location has a portal to anywhere. Wally and Strutter take turns swinging onto two other cages and then to the platform so they can create a sort of zipline to the main platform. They’re able to steal the map back and escape, though Og is turned into a pig by Evil.
Unfortunately, Kevin, who is distracting Evil’s minions (which are horrifying creatures with bull skulls for heads and single claws for hands and who sound like the Nazgul, though resident LOTR superfan Josh disagrees) is confronted by Evil himself.
Evil kills all of his own assistants and gets the map from Kevin. But! Before he can destroy Kevin, the rest of the 6 arrive with reinforcements from across time: knights, a tank, archers, spacecraft from the future, and cowboys on horses.
I truly can’t even describe what happens next. Basically, Evil dodges all of the attacks on him in a myriad of weird ways. At one point, he inflates like Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka and sends all the arrows shot at him back at the archers. He releases blinding, toxic gas as the cavalry approaches. And, he simply blocks the tank with his hands like table tennis.
Sadly, in the melee, Fidgit is crushed by a falling column.
As Evil raises his arms to attack the group one final time, he bursts into flames and is engulfed in smoke. The Supreme Being’s head appears and then an old man in a suit takes Evil’s place. This is the Supreme Being incarnate.
He removes the column from Fidgit and brings him back to life.
SB tells the group that all of their adventures were a test of his creation. He gave them the map and knew what was happening the whole time. He then asks them to clean up Evil and put him in a trash can. One small bit left will corrupt the whole Universe.
Kevin asks SB, “You mean you let all those people die, just to test your creation? Why do we have to have evil?”
SB responds, “I think it’s something to do with free will.”
They all leave Kevin behind with a smoking bit of Evil that was missed. Kevin wakes up in his room where there is real smoke. Two firefighters break down the door and carry him out of his house.
One of the firefighters is played by Sean Connery, who Kevin recognizes as King Agamemnon, his daddy from the past.
Kevin pulls the polaroids of his adventure out of his pocket, confirming it was all real. As the firefighters leave, Sean Connery winks at him.
Turns out his parent’s toaster caused the fire. Inside it is a smouldering rock. Kevin says, “Don’t touch it, it’s evil!” His mom touches it and his parents explode.
The camera zooms out, out, out into outer space and then to the map. It is rolled up by the Supreme Being.
THE END.
Okay, so this movie is pretty fun and has some funny moments.
…
That’s really it.
I accept that this may very well be a “you had to be there” childhood nostalgia movie from the 80s, but I wasn’t there, so this movie just sort of felt like watching someone’s dream and waiting for it to be over so I could get back to whatever else it is I’d rather be doing.
I get, too, that they were trying to comment on the existence of an omnipresent and omnipotent God, which I would normally be all about, but it felt sort of tacked on at the end, which doesn’t seem like the best place for existential musings? Okay, so SB is in charge of everything and wanted to take his creation for a spin. But why a band of thieves? Why Kevin? Why was everyone dressed like assholes? Too many questions for me, folks.
Up next is Branded to Kill, which is a 1967 low-budget yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki. Apparently, it was originally panned and then gained a cult following, which is one of my favorite narrative arcs in the life of a movie. See you there?
XOXO,
Steph