Word: pythonic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grown used to bursts of the unexpected from Monty Python, and the scene is from Time Bandits, a scii/historical adventure directed by Python's Terry Gilliam. Interspersing such 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...
...songs by George Harrison," there is but one, a piece of fluff during the end titles; the "stars" only pop in for cameos; and the connection with Python is not as direct as the trailer and poster promise. If you go to see clever punning, naughty bits, and no-holds-barred tomfoolery, you will leave feeling vaguely amused but mostly cheated. Time Bandits must be approached, of at all, from the unjaded perspective of an eleven-year-old--the perspective the plot hinges...
...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...