Review of Time Bandits (1981) by Harry W — 16 Dec 2013

Time Bandits sounded like a lot of fun on the surface, but it failed to interest me.

Regardless of its ambitious plot which had fun ideals to it, and the decent directional job of Terry Gilliam, I found myself disappointed with Time Bandits. It had a lot of ambition and should have satisfied me more than it did, but really it was.

The lighting in Time Bandits is consistently dark and during some of the scenes it can becomes difficult to comprehend what is occurring, or alternatively the dull visual traits can become a bore to the eyes of the viewer. Even the scenes with entertaining aspects are let down by the rough visual quality of the camera and the poorly positioned cinematography which receives poor lighting and doesn't boast many visual aspects to be proud of most of the time. There seems to be more effort put into capturing good sound effects than visuals in Time Bandits, and so it's more a treat for the ears than the eyes in my opinion.

The theme of adventure just didn't really didn't feel legitimate to me because I didn't feel the scale of the story or visualise the adventure as well as Terry Gilliam had tried to achieve. I found Time Bandits to be a decent concept that could have been executed better. I didn't think it really took advantage of its production values, and considering what it achieved with $5 Million Meagre Dollars I thought it would have taken better directions.

The predominant issue I found held back the adventure was that the cinematography shot everything from up way too close, instead of at a decent distance which would get a lot in perspective, including the landscape. That would up the scale and enhance the feel of the adventure, but alas that did not happen unfortunately. There was also a bit much talking and not enough actual movement through the worlds, and despite the great performances of John Cleese and Sean Connery they received little screen time. They still made an impression.

Basically, all the charm of Terry Gilliam's work is there but I didn't enjoy the film's execution of the story because it wasn't all that impressive visually and lacked the adventurous feel it put itself out to reach. I found elements of it OK, but that it was rudimentary as a whole. Time Bandits was an attempt, but that's all I found it to be. A long, boring attempt devoid of adventure yet featuring potential, as well as good visual effects.