Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3926 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-05-11
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Customer Reviews

Terry Gilliam--Once Again At His BEST!
Terry Gilliam's works are always magically a bit odd and off center, and keep the viewer mystified and off balance, and in the end...it all works out. Somehow. The relationship between Sean Connery's King Agamemnon and the protagonist (Kevin) is sweet and not-quite-happy-ending enough for me, but the film is a masterpiece in the fantasy genre.

Does NOT Stand the Test of Time
My husband, 11 year old daughter, and I watched TIME BANDITS the other evening. My husband remembered it from his college days as being extremely funny, and thought we would all enjoy it. The whole family loves British comedy, and we were really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, TIME BANDITS has not held up well over the years. We all sat there a bit glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, waiting for the laughs.

For some reason that I cannot quite my finger on, this film just isn't funny anymore (if it ever was). With supposedly Monty Python-esque humor, I would have thought that TIME BANDITS would have become a sort of timeless classic similar to the Monty Python films. But what works for Monty Python, what makes THEM classic, doesn't work or is severely lacking in TIME BANDITS.

The plot is old, predictable, disjointed, and, quite frankly, boring. The pace is plodding and tedious. The special effects, while they may possibly have been innovative in 1981, look cheap and cheesy. The acting, from this "all star" cast is mostly dreadful, although John Cleese and Sean Connery both deliver their typical fine performances. The ending is bizarre, and while I understand what the director was going for, fails miserably. And, as others have stated over and over, the quality of the disk transfer is just horrible - dark, jumpy, and full of artifacts.

I was temped to give this a two-star rating based solely on the performances John Cleese and Sean Connery, but why bother? You can see both of them in much better films. TIME BANDITS is dated, dumb, and dull. NOT RECOMMENDED.

Pure Chaos
Terry Gilliam movies are a mixed bag, but rest assured they are always going to be surreal. The silly premise of a band of international thieves stealing a map from the Supreme Being and running amuck with comic escapades involving historical figures is wonderfully goofy gold mine to work with. Unfortunately, many of the scenes are just not that funny. Napolean's obsession with short people was just obvious and was pretty dull to watch. The scenes involving ancient Greece, outside of a great festival scene, was slow moving and didn't really do much to advance the plot. The Robin Hood scene, on the other hand, was hilarious, as well as the recurring joke with two lovers they constantly interfere with.

The villain, who else but The Evil Genius, was hilarious, and the movie kicked in to full gear when the band set out into the "Time of Legends". The chaos on the screen in the climactic battle made up for some of the misses in the film.

Oh, and there's satire of materialism, some theological studies, and an extremely amusing conception of The Supreme Being at the end. Overall, it's all too odd to feel you're being beaten over the head any of the underlying messages, and just adds to the general weirdness.

Not Gilliam's best, but good when you're in the mood for something completely different.