Word: python
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Monty Python Strikes Back at Star Wars. Crash of the Titans. Malice in Blunderland. The Gizzard of Odd. Is this what Gilliam and Palin had in mind? A nasty fantasy, an antiepic, a revisionist fable? Seems so: surely the pair of Pythonians who concocted this ragged film knew what they were about. If the scenario dismisses good ideas and stretches bad ones, if the comic timing in some sequences seems laboriously off, if the film manages to alienate the audience that might have been attracted to it-well, Gilliam and Palin must have wanted it that...
...screenplay, by Gilliam and co-Python Michael Palin, is eclectic to the point of being wholly derivative, both thematically and visually. It draws on everything from the anti-modern stance of A Clockwork Orange, to the scenic flash of Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the overt tackiness of the original Flash Gordon: yet it remains an underwhelming story. The adventure involves Kevin, a young, modern-age Briton (not so much played as walked through by unknown Craig Warnock), whose parents ive in subservience to hundreds of whirring, useless kitchen apparati and sit transfixed as horrific gameshows prance across...
Nevertheless, Pythonic curveballs keep the movie accessible for adults. Sherwood Forest teems with spit, snot, and dismembered limbs. John Cleese is a lively, simpleton "Hood," distributing art treasures to the downtrodden. "Do you know the poor? I'm sure you'd like them!" he insists with comic-book eyebrows. Michael Palin and Shelley Duvall, in dual roles as lovers across two eras, provide additional satire on old movies, with a touch of the absurd: Palin, in desperate search for a cure to his vague sexual problem, blurts out, "I must have fruit!" This can mean anything; Python at its best...
...attempts at teaching youth via fairy-book change of time, place, and character, and captivating adults via snatches of humor, the movie's thrust falls somewhere in the dangerous middle ground. Gilliam was Python's sordid animator in Time Bandits and often uses people as if they were cartoons. There are many violent scenes worthy of Tom and Jerry or Wile E. Coyote except with live subjects as characters smash into walls, eat rats, and explode. It's bad enough when Elmer Fudd blows up and survives unscathed, but the violence here is too up-front to be humorous...
...movie, then, not as a failed Python comedy, but as the only possible fairy tale remaining: irreverent, bellicose, and tenuous in its morality. Time Bandits has a lot of heart, despite the clunky presence of some unworkable scenes, unbelievable sets, and untalented actors. It addresses itself to children and the child in everyone, demanding answers, imparting few. Kevin asks the Supreme Being why evil exists and learns "it has something to do with free will," a sad lesson for any eleven-year...