Nostalgia: Time Bandits
“What is it that you like about this movie?” Denise asked, and I believe that she meant that in the most loving way.
She was patiently waiting as I finished watching the last few minutes of “Time Bandits”. After having it sit on my Amazon.com wish list for several years with no hope of rescue, I finally went out and bought myself a copy. Had to use up that Madison Square Mall gift card somehow.
I was seriously into this movie as a pre-teen, and I’ve wanted to own a copy of it for awhile now. It’s a little disturbing to see the movie’s somewhat dark ending (no spoilers!) and have no memory of finding it disturbing when I was a kid. But other than that, it was a lot of fun to see it again and see how much of I still remember after 20+ years. I guess “Time Bandits” was a kind of gateway to Monty Python for me, because I don’t remember knowing about the Pythons before seeing this movie. It was also the first Terry Gilliam movie I ever saw, and although he’s one of my favorite directors now, I don’t think that the fact that he directed “Time Bandits” meant anything to me at the time.
If you didn’t see it then, well, you’re probably not going to get much out of it now. I’ll readily admit that a big part of my enjoyment is the whole nostalgia factor. But if you saw this movie as a kid and loved it like I did, do yourself a favor and rent it sometime.
Yeah, I think I saw this movie when I was 12 and absolutely loved it. I’ve seen it a couple times since, on HBO and whatever. It still holds up well, I think.
The very last bit is, as you say, rather dark (and completely unnecessary, really). For some reason I thought it was funny at the time. Mayber we’re overthinking it in our old age.
Now excuse me while I go look for the most fabulous object in the world.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:36 amI saw this when I was nine. I already knew who Monty Python was, so the appearance by John Cleese especially tickled me. Looking back on it now, it is easy to tell that Terry Gilliam was still finding his voice. It still shows what I consider to be one of his common themes: there are good people who try to do everything and there are bad people who try to explain everything, but my goodness there are an awful lot of stupid people who never seem to do either.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:33 pm