When Pythons Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin started working on the script for Time Bandits, they aimed, as Gilliam put it, to create an adventure that was "intelligent enough for children and exciting enough for adults." And, with this tale of a boy (Craig Warnock) who goes on an epoch-jumping heist-marathon with a bunch ofdwarves, they certainly succeeded. Frequent bursts of twisted humour, several flashes of horror and a ton of first-class Brit cameos (John Cleese as a patronisingly upper-class Robin Hood; Sean Connery as a parlour-trick-fancying Agamemnon) combine to ensure their movie never ages.
DVD Extras:
Shoddy. A bulk are of the picture-gallery variety (one of which flicks through at its own pace, not yours), and Gilliam's excellent storyboards are best appreciated on paper, not the screen. There's an interview with Gilliam and Palin, but it's a rambling, badly edited affair which mainly involves the two ex-Pythons having memory clashes. As for the commentary, it contains Gilliam's typically amusing stories, but these are often interrupted by separate voiceover clips from Palin, Cleese (for all of two minutes) and Warnock, who admits at the start that he can't really remember much... A painful let down.
