tek's rating:

Time Bandits (PG)
Criterion; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Templeton Gate; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Google Play; iTunes; Max; Vudu; YouTube

Well. This could go under "science fiction" or "fantasy" or "comedy" or probably other headings, but... I thought what most fit is just plain "weird." It's something I've wanted to see for a long time, and I wanted to really like it. Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to. I mean... I liked it, I guess, just not as much as I'd hoped. Sigh. This always seems to happen with Terry Gilliam films. I want and somehow fully expect to quite like them, but somehow I never do. And I hate myself for it. I feel like there must be something wrong with me... or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there's something not as wrong with me as I normally feel there is (and want there to be). In terms of my entertainment choices, at least. I mean, I like to think I'm kind of weird and like weird movies, and therefore I should be really into Terry Gilliam films, because they're weird. So I'm disappointed that I'm not as into them as I should be.

Anyway, about the movie. There's a boy named Kevin, and one night a knight crashes through his bedroom wall. Or maybe not, I dunno. But the next night a group of little people crashes in. They have no leader, although one of them named Randall (David Rappaport) holds a stolen map and seems to make all the decisions. Not that there isn't a great deal of argument amongst them. The map is of the Universe, and they stole it from the Supreme Being, for whom they used to work, creating trees and bushes and such. The map shows holes in the fabric of time, which they want to use to become robbers and get rich, stealing stuff from all over history. Kevin gets swept away with them on their adventures.

They all meet various people throughout time like Napoleon, Robin Hood, Agamemnon, and so forth. Meanwhile, the Source of All Evil (David Warner) is setting a trap for them. He wants to get his hand on the map so he can free himself from the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness in which the Supreme Being had imprisoned him, and then take over the Universe and remake it according to his will.

Um... I'm not sure what else to say. It's all very weird and random and sort of incoherent and crazy and unpolished. Very sort of Pythonian, of course. Definitely a cool movie to own, and to have seen, but I don't know if or when I might want to see it again. I'll certainly be holding on to the DVD, though.


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