When Terry Gilliam, former member of Monty Python's Flying Circus co-wrote a script with his Python teammate Michael Palin called Time Bandits (1981), Hollywood studios should have been eager to produce it, but Gilliam found no takers. None of them could easily categorize the film; was it for adults? Was it for kids? Was it a fantasy or an adventure? In truth, the film was all of these and more.

Former Beatle (and Python fan) George Harrison and his partner, Denis O'Brien understood what Gilliam and Palin were trying to do, and agreed to executive produce the movie under their HandMade Films company, mortgaging their office building for the funds. Harrison would even contribute the song Dream Away for free. After the movie wrapped, it was screened for major distributors, who O'Brien later said walked out on the film. After a struggle to find a releasing company, Avco Embassy Pictures agreed to distribute it for a fee and for a $5.5 million to cover the cost of film prints and marketing. When Time Bandits was released in the United States on November 6, 1981, Gilliam and Avco Embassy had the last laugh.

The plot of Time Bandits is pure Gilliam, whose films could never be considered ordinary. Eleven-year-old Kevin (Craig Warnock), a neglected boy obsessed with Ancient Greece, wakes up in the middle of the night as a knight appears from his closet and rides off through a forest where his bedroom wall used to stand. Believing that what he saw was real and not a dream, Kevin is ready and packed the next evening for the knight's return. Instead of the knight, a group of little people, led by Randall (David Rappaport) show up, telling him that they have stolen an important map belonging to the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson). The rest of the film consists of the group going into different time periods and meet famous people while in search of treasure, from Ancient Greece, where Kevin meets and is adopted by King Agamemnon (Sean Connery), to Medieval England and Robin Hood (John Cleese), and 1800's Italy and Napoleon (Ian Holm). They even meet Evil itself (played by the always deliciously villainous David Warner). Also in the cast were Gilliam's Monty Python teammate Michael Palin (with whom he co-wrote the screenplay), Shelly Duvall, Peter Vaughan, Jim Broadbent, and Katherine Helmond.

Gilliam told a reporter that the film was his attempt to make a stronger film for kids, instead of what he called the typical "mushy" fare. "People have been making these (expletive) little 'G' films that say nothing for so long. All the little kids in them are wimps. The boy in Time Bandits, Kevin, takes charge. He has control over his life. He can take care of himself. This is a kid's lib film." When asked if kids would be frightened by Time Bandits , the director replied that the film was "closer to being a fairy tale than anything else, and that's what fairy tales did, they terrified you. The function was to give you a horrendous experience and you came out the other side, and you're a bit stronger for the fact." Gilliam screened the film for hundreds of kids to see if anything bothered them that he might have to take out. Although hundreds of children saw the film, the only ones who had a problem with it were adults.

Made for a tiny $5 million, Time Bandits premiered at the Loew's Twin theater in New York City, and was so successful that it made back its cost on opening weekend, raking in $6,507,356, making it the number one film in 821 theaters and Avco Embassy's biggest opening to date. Eventually, it would gross over $42 million in the United States alone, but did only moderate business in the United Kingdom due to unfavorable comparisons to Monty Python . Part of the reason it did well in the U.S. was that the marketing for the film was aimed at various demographics, including families, kids, and adults, rather than focusing on just kids. Film critics were generally positive, with Marsha Fottler calling Time Bandits "the best bad dream of the year," and Skip Sheffield writing that the film made him "wish I were a kid again. Then I could identify even more with the film's hero, an 11-year-old British schoolboy named Kevin. [...] Time Bandits is irreverent, satirical, hilarious, philosophical and absurd, all the while being the most jam-packed fantasy-adventure I've seen in years."

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Boyer, Peter "'Time Bandits' Surprises Industry" Toledo Blade 20 Nov 81
Fottler, Marsha "Time Bandits - Year's Best Bad Dream" Sarasota Herald-Tribune 13 Nov 81
Loohais, Jackie "'Time Bandits' Director/Writer Says He's Trying to Put Guts in Kids' Movies" The Milwaukee Journal 22 Nov 81
Matthews, Jack, Gilliam, Terry, and Stoppard, Tom The Battle of Brazil
Sheffield, Skip "Adults Can Steal Childhood in 'Time Bandits'" Boca Raton News 8 Nov 81
Worley, Alex "Time Bandits" http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/471893/
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=timebandits.htm