Word: oz.
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...moments with a script of Disneyesque fantasy, Time Bandits is like having Woody Allen and Sam Peckinpaugh co-direct The Sound of Music. Gilliam has taken the Pythonic theme that everything you know is wrong, and concocted a children's fable owing not a little to The Wizard of Oz. There are drags and snags in the plot, suspense, and humor, but the movie is a modest success; the largest difficulty ooming is escaping its skewed ad campaign...
...movie becomes episodic, as the elfish ones drag the honest, clearerheaded (and, by a few inches, taller) boy from time zone to time zone; yet unlike Dorothy's tribulations in Oz, each seems chosen for comical rather than didactic purpose. The first era represents Napoleon (Ian Holm) as a silly drunk, obsessed with height and puppets instead of the conquest of Italy. Holm is awkwardly funny in a sort of ludicrous, obvious way, not even bothering to sustain a French accent. Agamemnon (Sean Connery, looking at once--and for once--agacious, fatherly, and mischievous), is concerned more with magic tricks...
...film's major hangup is its confused characterization of evil. The devil (David Warner a la Ming the Merciless) tries to encompass all evil but fails to conjure anything but pity for his campy lines. Margaret Hamilton's witch in Oz terrified children of all ages; she never diluted her rottenness. Yet Gilliam has exorcised the seriousness out of where it belongs and makes the devil and his cohorts buffoons, wearing garbage bags over their capes and muttering things about advanced technology. Gilliam intends the plastic and electronics, which were also prominent in Kevin's living room, to personify evil...
This is The Wizard of Oz for the '80s, alright. The Pythonic theme--nothing you know is sacred or even really there--suddenly seems a huge, monstrous thing to impose on kids like Kevin; he is left with only a sackful of Polaroids and two piles of ashes where his authoritative parents once stood. Gilliam leaves us with Black Humor when all along his theme had been gallantry and inquisitiveness. The guest stars have their fun, the midgets get back their divine employment. But Kevin is on his own in the world, with only a stack of postcards--enough...
...drink the equivalent of 1½ oz. of liquor a day? Subtract...