Today's movie recommendation is Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981). Picture below.
The movie takes place in England in 1981 in the home of a young boy named Kevin. Kevin's parents are obsessed with technology and spend little time paying any attention to Kevin or his great interest in history. Kevin is sent to bed one night where he witnesses a knight bursting through his dresser and into a great forest where his bedroom wall used to be. His room turns back to normal, but Kevin is very anxious to see if anything will happen the next night. After going to bed remarkably early the next night with his Polaroid camera tucked into bed with him, Kevin awaits something remarkable to happen but soon falls asleep. Kevin awakens to find a group of grungy dwarfs entering his room clearly from another time period. The dwarfs threaten Kevin to show them a way out of his room, but then finally manage to push his bedroom wall way out into space as a way out. As they're in the process of leaving, a great God-like head appears in Kevin's room which demands that the dwarfs return his map to him. Uncertain of what to do, but afraid of the head, Kevin follows the dwarfs into other time periods where they meet famous historical figures and rob them blind. Evil (essentially a Devil-like character) in the meanwhile watches Kevin and his new formed friends and plots to trick them into giving him the map, and therefore the power of the universe.
You can definitely tell when watching this movie that it was made in the early 80's, which gives it some charm. This is definitely a movie that both parents and kids will appreciate. Anyone who is a Monty Python fan should get a kick out of seeing John Cleese and some of the other guys in random roles throughout the film. Although the history aspects aren't very accurate, they do provide good entertainment.
Fun facts:
- This movie came to be because Gilliam couldn't get his movie Brazil picked up. He wrote the story for Time Bandits in one weekend, which he then showed to Mike Palin who helped him form the characters and dialogue.
- Gilliam received a lot of fan mail from smaller people around the world thanking him for actually treating them like normal people in his film and for allowing the dwarfs in his film to have real heroic roles instead of roles where they are just made fun of.
- The dwarf on horseback in the final battle actually broke his arm in the making of the scene and had to shoot the rest of the film with his cast arm hidden behind the cowboys.
- In the rough draft of the movie script, Gilliam and Palin wrote the Greek battle scene with the victorious warrior taking off his helmet to reveal himself as Sean Connery, or someone similar looking but not nearly as famous. They had no idea that they would actually be able to get Connery to play the role. Their manager, Denis O'Brien, happened to be playing golf with Connery and found out that Connery's most recent films were not doing so well and that he actually was interested in the role.
- Sean Connery wasn't an easy actor to work with. In the desert scene, Connery insisted, "I’m not going to let you shoot me getting on the horse. I’ll look like shit. So I’ll just stand in the stirrups and I’ll lower myself down. You gotta get me on in post. Good bye, kid.".
- Connery was originally supposed to be the leader of the archers in the final battle scene (and the one who gets crushed under the pillar) but Gilliam only had access to Connery for a set number of days that were already used up.
- This movie was produced by Handmade Films, which was heavily supported by George Harrison.
This movie is rated PG. I think any child over 6 would be fine watching this movie. The scary parts aren't very scary, but they might be for kids under 5 and any kid under 6 may have a harder time keeping up with the plot.
Link to the trailer
My favorite Gilliam movie was Brazil. Twelve Monkeys was pretty good too.
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