Time Bandits

When Going Live’s Trevor and Simon constituted TV entertainment for a generation of kids, Terry Gilliam’s tour-de-force Time Bandits burst onto the screen. Dwarf burglars smash through young boy Kevin’s closet, taking him on a thieving adventure through time: escaping predicaments with a map swiped from The Supreme Being. Meeting and stealing from Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (Cleese) and Big Tam’s Agamemnon along the way, the ramshackle troupe face a final showdown with the map obsessed Evil Genius (David Warner). As we prepare for the much anticipated CGI fest Doctor Parnassus, this nostalgic nod back to a time of painstaking set design and optical illusions reveals Gilliam’s artistry still submerges the audience in his nightmarish, surreal and hilarious take on history and fairytales. Though revisiting childhood favourites can be a demystifying experience, Time Bandits still stands on its stop-motion legs. As Gilliam says in the accompanying interview to this re-release, it is “intelligent enough for children, exciting enough for adults”.