Time Bandits

I think I mentioned last week that TCM is doing a spotlight this month on time travel in the movies, airing movies on the theme every Thursday in prime time. I had recorded the movie Time Bandits a few months back, and see that it's on the schedule as part of this month's spotlight, overnight tonight at 1:00 AM (so still late Thursday evening out on the west coast). As always, with that in mind, I made a point of watching it to do a review on it.

Kevin (Craig Warnock) is a young boy living in what looks like a smaller-city British housing development with his parents, who seem more concerned with what's going to be on the telly tonight than they do about Kevin. As such, Kevin is a bit of a loner who has vivid fantasies. One night in bed, he sees a knight in shining armor riding out of the armoire in his bedroom, only to go through the wall on the other side. Now, you might think this is all just a bad dream, and it's possible that the whole movie is just a dream, although it doesn't say so.

Kevin, however, is curious, so the next night, he arranges to try to get photographic evidence should anything come out of his armoire again. Amazingly enough, a group of dwarves come bounding into his room. That ought to be frightening enough, but even worse is that this disembodied head claiming to be a Supreme Being also comes out of the armoire, so all of the dwarves push one of the walls of Kevin's bedroom to make a long hallway. And with the Supreme Being possibly threatening Kevin too, he decides to join the dwarves, who eventually escape into some sort of hole.

Or, this being a fantasy film, it's really a vortex, one that takes them to different times and places. The dwarves have found a map that will enable them to look for, well, something. Not really found, but stolen, and the Supreme Being (who finally shows up in the flesh for the finale and is played by Sir Ralph Richardson) would like it back. Also wanting it for his own nefarious purposes is the Evil Genius (David Warner), who has no qualms about killing his minions at the drop of a hat.

In any case, the dwarves and Kevin have wound up in the Napoleonic era, at a time when Napoleon (Ian Holm) is attacking Italy. The dwarves wind up putting on a show for Napoleon, who really enjoys it. But unfortunately, the Supreme Being finds where the dwarves have gone off to, and shows up to force them to beat a hasty escape, something that's going to happen several times over the course of the movie. Meanwhile, the Evil Genius watches on like a witch watching in a crystal ball.

The group next winds up in England in the time of Robin Hood (John Cleese), as well as the sinking of the Titanic, Greece in the time of Agamemnon (Sean Connery), and a boat captained by an ogre and his wife (Katherine Helmond) before the ultimately make it to the Evil Genius' lair for the climactic battle of good and evil.

Time Bandits has a wonderful premise, although I found myself thinking that the individual segments don't quite make a coherent whole, making it a bit hard to decipher what the movie is really going to be about. Still, there's enough adventure in the film for boys about the age of Kevin in the movie, while there's also some humor in each of the segments that will probably go over the heads of the kids and appeal to the adults watching it. The ending is also a bit surprising.