Tag: John Cleese

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The Python’s finest hour is a hit-a-minute medieval comedy that I never fail to laugh at

Director: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Cast: Graham Chapman (King Arthur), John Cleese (Sir Lancelot/The Black Knight/French Taunter/Tim the Enchanter), Terry Gilliam (Patsy/ Soothsaying Bridgekeeper/The Green Knight/Sir Bors), Eric Idle (Sir Robin the-not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot/Concorde, Dead collector/Roger the Shrubber/Brother Maynard), Terry Jones (Sir Bedevere the Wise/Prince Herbert/Dennis’ mother), Michael Palin (Sir Galahad the Pure/Leader of the Knights Who Say Ni/Lord of Swamp Castle/Dennis), Connie Booth (Miss Islington), Carol Cleveland (Zoot/Dingo)

I’ve sometimes found the surreal, satirical and sometimes plain silly humour of the Monty Python troupe hit-and-miss. But when it lands, it really lands and Monty Python and the Holy Grail may well just be their finest hour. Essentially a series of sketches loosely worked together into a sort-of-plot, but never taking itself too seriously, it’s an often-inspired collection of highly influential gags delivered by a troupe of performers at the top-of-their-game (it’s hard to believe that they have all said shooting the film was a tough, punishing and exhausting process).

What Python got right here is how easy – and hilarious – it is to poke fun at something so very po-faced and serious as medievalism had a tendency to take itself back then. In fact, it’s perhaps a lasting tribute to the film that no-one has ever been able to take it quite as seriously since. Monty Python and the Holy Grail also lines up shots at the arthouse high-brow seriousness of films like Andrei Rublev and, most famously, The Seventh Seal (those hilarious, moose-obsessed, opening credits are a flawless take-down of Bergman’s portentous opening) but also a dismantling of the likes of Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac (no-one can watch that film’s opening now without picturing the Black Knight protesting ‘It’s a only a flesh wound!’ as crimson spray flows freely).

I love Holy Grail. It’s practically designed for undergraduates to sit around and watch, while getting slowly pissed and then spend ages quoting at each other. Many of its jokes lean into bizarre surrealism and funny sounding words – “shrubbery!” just sounds funny, even more so when it’s squeaked out by a giant Michael Palin in a ridiculous helmet affecting a rhotacism. And the Pythons knew how to turn problems into genre-defining gags: thank God they couldn’t afford horses, so instead came up with the frankly genius idea to just mime the knights riding horses to the sound of two coconut halves being visibly tapped together by their squires.

And then to have the comic presence of mind to riff on enforced ideas like this so much (just how did coconuts turn up in medieval Britain?) that for generations, fans will ram their tongues earnestly into their cheeks debating the migratory habits and air speeds of laden and unladen swallows. It’s all part of a superbly written script, which get just the right balance between Thomas Mallory-esque medieval rhythms laced with nonsese ( “The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land”) and a mix of anachronistic casualism and simmering middle-class frustration. All the time in Monty Python and the Holy Grail there are traces of the sort of serious, played-dead-straight, medieval film this could be, making the constant punctuation of surreal, fourth-wall leaning, silliness all the more hilarious.

A lot of this also comes down the highly skilled comic playing of the troupe. Graham Chapman, in particular, has the seemingly dull job of playing the straight-man. But his ability to play, even the most ridiculous encounters, with complete earnestness is crucial to the film’s success. Arthur is, really, a ludicrous figure, but Chapman knows he can never acknowledge this for the joke to work. Hilariously, the legendary king here becomes a sort of put-upon middle-manager, constantly frustrated while going about his day job, dumb enough to be unaware of how absurd he is, but smart enough to get frustrated at the increasingly dim antics of his followers.

It also allows the rest of the troupe to let rip with broader comic performances, all of whom have a whale of a time. John Cleese’s pompous bossiness and control-freak mania is perfect for the psychotic Sir Lancelot while his latent comic cruelty, combined with a passion for silly accents and walking, is perfect for the famed French taunter (the funniest Frenchman on screen). Palin’s goodie-two-shoes decency is great for the tempted Sir Galahad while his brilliant capacity for deluded self-importance nails the Lord of Swamp Castle – and who else could have taken such an impish delight in the Trotskyist mantras of the socialist peasant Dennis? For the rest of the troupe, Eric Idle’s mix of cheek, dressed-up poshness and wimpy weakness is expertly used while Terry Jones mocks academia as Sir Bedevere and whines brilliantly as Herbert. And no-one does dirty better than Terry Gilliam.

Gilliam and Jones also directed, allegedly not always harmoniously neither quite agreeing if this was a film or whether it was a comic show. But the presence of Gilliam behind the camera probably accounts for why this is the most visually striking Monty Python film, with mists rolling over the hills and the Scottish locations given a mythic power which makes the silly jokes that happen all around them even funnier – while Jones’ medievalist background surely helped define the film’s surprisingly authentic (and therefore even funnier) feel. Holy Grail also very successfully disguises that it was effectively all shot in one or two locations (Doune Castle is shot from so many angles it becomes about a dozen different locations).

But what really makes Holy Grail work is the quality of the jokes. And it opens with a run of gags of such consistent quality they are perhaps unparalleled in Python’s work. The Swallow debate. Bring Out Your Dead. Peasants nailing the ‘self-perpetuating autocracy’. The flesh wounds of the Black Knight. The witch trial. The French Taunter (“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!”). The Trojan Rabbit. Camelot being a silly place. The opening half of the film is one piece of solid comic gold and if the second half doesn’t have quite the same hit rate, it’s still more than funny enough.

And funny is what it is all about. You can say ‘it doesn’t have as good a plot as Life of Brian’. You can say it just ends, as if the troupe ran out of ideas. You can say it loses a steam. But it doesn’t matter when you laugh and laugh time and time again at its best bits. And you really do. And people who encounter it at the right age, will go on laughing at it for the rest of their lives., for decades to come.

Die Another Day (2002)

Pierce Brosnan signs off as Bond with the mess that is Die Another Day

Director: Lee Tamahori

Cast: Pierce Brosnan (James Bond), Halle Berry (Jinx Johnson), Toby Stephens (Gustav Graves), Rosamund Pike (Miranda Frost), Rick Yune (Tang Ling Zao), Judi Dench (M), John Cleese (Q), Michael Madsen (Damian Falco), Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny), Colin Salmon (Charles Robinson), Will Yun Lee (Colonal Tan-Sun Moon), Kenneth Tsang (General Moon), Madonna (Verity)

Die Another Day was the highest grossing Bond film ever released. So why was it almost four years before another one was made? Put simply, because this one weren’t no bloody good. Released at the Bond series’ 40th anniversary, Die Another Day was meant to be a celebration of everything Bond – instead it’s like the final nail in the coffin of an entire lifecycle in the franchise that started probably around the early Roger Moore films. When Bond came back out after this, he was radically different. 

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is sent undercover to Korea to take out renegade Korean Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee). The mission is a success – but Bond is betrayed and captured by the North Koreans. Coming out of Korean prison a year later, Bond is no longer wanted by MI6. So he goes off on his own to find out who betrayed him – and finds newly emerged diamond businessman Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) might have something to do with it. With a trail that starts in Hong Kong and heads to Cuba, the UK, Iceland and back to Korea he’ll work alongside CIA agent Jinx Johnson (Halle Berry) to find out how this all ties together and get his revenge.

Die Another Day starts a bit like a Connery Bond – and about half way through it segues into being perhaps the most ridiculously overblown Roger Moore-esque Bond you’ll ever see. I suppose you could say this was the scriptwriters trying to capture the essence of 40 years in one movie. But actually it’s probably just incoherent scriptwriting and stupid storytelling. It starts trying to be grounded – Bond is captured and tortured for a year! – but then shrugs off any aftereffects of this year of hell with lackadaisical ease before throwing us into the sort of “Ice palace! Invisible cars! A weapon that channels the power of the sun!” malarkey that even Roger might have thought was a little bit too much.

It’s not helped by the fact that the entire film is so shoddily put together and so lazy in its execution. The one liners in this film are terrible – there are no double entendres in this film only single entrendres (words like thrust, pleasure, weapon and mouthful are used with gleeful abandon) – and far from being a playful exercise in Bond’s cheekiness are just hand-in-the-mouth embarrassing. But that’s almost as nothing compared to the woeful special effects. Even in 2002, nothing in this film looked real. 

I hardly know where to start with the awful plasticky sheen of the effects here. The film opens with Bond and fellow agents surfing (!) into a deserted island – at the end of which Brosnan in front of blatant blue screen rips off his mask to show it-was-definitely-him. As if that wasn’t bad enough (Bond surfs? I’m out!) Bond surfs AGAIN in the movie halfway through, using a parachute as a sail to escape possibly the least convincing wave ever put onto film. It really has to be seen to be believed (or rather not believed). That’s not to mention the wonky overblown final plane sequence, or a laughably unrealistic looking Jinx dive from a cliff down into the water below.

Brosnan probably tries his best in all this, but even he can’t save this total mess. How does a film that started with Bond in prison and emerging damaged and on a gritty quest for revenge end with a villain wearing a robot suit controlling the sun? The script after the first 15 minutes gives Brosnan nothing to play with. The film loses all interest in the traitor plotline about halfway through, and when she is unmasked (in a twist that surprises no one at all) Bond barely seems to care. Pierce himself looks frankly too old and a little out of shape (his running in this film with his arms pumping up to his face looks terrible), something only magnified by the youth of his co-stars. 

Not that I’m saying his co-stars are any good either. When this film came out there was a brief flurry of excitement that Halle Berry’s Jinx would be worth a franchise of her own. That died shortly after the film came out – this is a character that acts tough when needed, but still needs to be saved twice in quick succession by Bond, who says faux-tough things like “Yo Mama!” but has barely two personality facets to rub together. Berry simply does her bit and meets the requirement of looking sexy and fighting. Mind you she still fares better than an embarrassing Toby Stephens, whose villain is so paper-thin the actor seems to have taken the bizarre decision to channel Alan Partridge. Rosamund Pike’s fencing MI5 agent barely registers.

Needless to say Bond beds her – as he beds all the women in this with a perfunctory inevitability that fits the box-ticking exercise of the whole film. The film is littered with references to past Bond films, although that is probably only going to make you want to watch almost any of the other films instead. Perhaps to try and up the ante and make this one “even biggerer and betterer than before” there are more gadgets than ever before. These are topped with the crowning turd of the invisible car, a nadir for the franchise, a senseless advantage (Bond at one point follows directly behind two walking heavies in the car – it’s invisible NOT silent for goodness sake!) and something so overblown that however much the producers at the time tried to justify it by pointing at military technology just sounds silly. Don’t get met started on the bizarre VR training sequence Bond carries out (later replayed for a grotesquely demeaning Moneypenny joke that made me feel sorry for Samantha Bond).

But then the whole thing basically sounds silly. Giving the villain a huge ice palace lair might have seemed like a cheeky nod, but again it just looks absurd and the producers desperately trying to find a location that hasn’t been used before. The entire film feels like a rushed attempt to get something out for the 40th anniversary (perhaps the rush helps explain the insane product placement, leading to the film being nicknamed Buy Another Day). The script has been assembled from the off-cuts of other Bond films. There are no fresh ideas at all and everything that happens in the film has the air of “well this sort of thing happens in Bond films”. The script and special effects feel half finished. Rather than a tribute to how Bond was done in the past, it feels like a tombstone. Here lies James Bond c. 1967-2002. No wonder under Daniel Craig he needed to be reborn as someone who felt vaguely in touch with something approaching reality.

The World is Not Enough (1999)


Pierce Brosnan falls into Sophie Marceau’s clutches. Time for one last screw.

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: Pierce Brosnan (James Bond), Sophie Marceau (Elektra King), Robert Carlyle (Renard), Denise Richards (Dr Christmas Jones), Robbie Coltrane (Valentin Zukovsky), Judi Dench (M), Michael Kitchen (Bill Tanner), Colin Salmon (Charles Robinson), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), John Cleese (R), Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny), Ulrich Thomsen (Sasha Davidov)

I’ve long been of the belief that Pierce Brosnan’s Bonds were each a decline from the last, no matter how much money and action were thrown at the screen. TWINE in no way shakes that opinion. It’s a film I remember when I saw it in the cinema twenty years ago being a little, well, disappointed by.

After the assassination of an oil tycoon in MI6 headquarters, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned to protect his daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau) as she vows to complete the pipeline her father started. MI6 believes her life is endangered by her former kidnapper Renard (Robert Carlyle). Heading to Eastern Europe, Bond soon finds himself in the middle of a complex game, with a mysterious string puller, that seems to revolve around the stealing of a nuclear warhead and the kidnap of M (Judi Dench), with only nuclear scientist Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) to help.

TWINE is all about its electrifying opening sequence. It’s possibly the biggest, most exciting introduction to a Bond movie yet. Not only does it have a truly compelling action sequence in the boat chase down the Thames, but there’s plenty of plot, tension, mystery, revelation and humour – Bond straightens his tie under water – to match the entire content of some Bond capers. Brosnan is deadly in the Bilbao sequence – you believe he’s a killer – he’s working out of the money trap is Bond at his most ingenious and the beautifully filmed and edited boat chase is an absolute wonder. It’s edge of the seat stuff and when it finishes, you can just imagine a cinema full of people letting out a sigh of relief and kicking back to enjoy the rest of the film.

In fact that’s part of the problem. As Anthony Lane said in his review of the film “It’s the best 15 minutes in film this year. Let’s pack up and go home”. The problem is literally nothing in the film that follows can even hope to live up to this – and by the end, it’s practically given up trying. How does a film that started so vibrantly end with such a hackneyed fight on a submarine, with our heroes squabbling over something so fiddily it looks like an ink cartridge?

In between the phenomenal start and the damp squib ending, the film pings off to a lot locations – Azerbaijan! Turkey! Bilbao! – but everywhere still has the same bland, identikit feel to it, for all the shots of the odd famous landmark. That’s not to mention the rather laborious plot that ties the film together. It’s a film that feels like it’s trying to make a series of big statements about our hidden selves, revenge, manipulation – but falls short each time. It’s wrapped inside the most elliptical villain scheme I can remember. I only watched it a few days ago and even I’m not sure why Elektra wanted to blow up that damn submarine in Turkey.

Bond and Renard face off in the underwhelming sub sequence

Increasingly it becomes bogged down in machinations that feel recycled from previous films in the series. Shady Russians, corrupt security guards, chases down the snowy mountains, fiddily endings in old style nuclear subs. The film’s second biggest set piece – the attack on a cavier factory – has a rather formulaic inevitability about it. 

It has its moments of cool and charm, but in many ways it’s a blunt and crude film. What sort of eclectic film casting selects people as wildly diverse as Goldie and Ulrich Thomson as sidekicks? Robbie Coltrane returns as Zukovsky, but his character has been broadened from his first outing in GoldenEye into some sort of comic relief, a cane carrying buffoon a million miles from the ruthless ex-hitman in his first appearance. We even get a return of the “MI6 accidentally stumbles in on Bond doing the nasty” closing gag so beloved of the Roger Moore era. By the end of the film it really feels we’ve come a million miles from the ruthless efficiency and dynamic action it opened with.

The film’s most interesting beat, without a doubt, is Elektra King. It’s a stroke of inventiveness to turn the character established as the Bond girl, into the film’s villain.  Elektra uses many of the tropes of traditional Bond girls – vulnerability, sensuality, playfulness, a certain gutsiness – and repackages them as villainous tools, weapons of manipulation and deceit. Sophie Marceau is very good as possibly the most intriguing villain of the whole series, and the film neatly leaves open the question of how far her experiences twisted her, or whether her sociopathy was a deep lying trait. Her chemistry with Brosnan seems at times a little forced, but she gets most of the meaty content of the story and handles it with gusto. It’s especially neat to see how Marceau adjusts and adapts her performance for each person she encounters – with Reynard she’s playful and infatuated, with Bond she’s more aloofly sensual.

Denise Richards gets all nuclear physicist

She certainly fares better than poor Denise Richards, playing a character who feels like she was written backwards from the film’s closing punchline (“I thought Christmas only comes once a year” indeed). As if the producers wanted to counterbalance the innovativeness of Elektra, Richards feels like she’s wandered in from a classic Moore film: nominally an expert in something grand sounding (nuclear physics – and you can have a £1 from me if you ever meet anyone who believes Denise Richards has a PhD in rocket science) but really a damsel in distress dressed in hot pants. I’d further add that Brosnan already looks far too old for her.

The film’s best asset though is Brosnan’s Bond. The more I rewatch Brosnan’s efforts, the more I feel sorry the guy didn’t get more of the sort of material Dalton and Craig received either side of him. He clearly has the acting chops to do something a bit more interesting with the character, but his Bond is always a bit tonally confused – one moment he will stare viciously at a fallen opponent, the next he’ll be wearing a shit-eating grin and perving over ladies’ underwear in a nightclub. Brosnan does both these things, I hasten to add, extremely well: this film is probably his peak action performance, and at several points (not least his first encounter with Reynard) his sense of physical danger is jaw dropping. TWINE is a kind of perfect embodiment of his era: 1/3rd Connery to 2/3rd Moore.

For all that the big picture of the film gets away from Apted, he does have a good eye for smaller moments that stick with you – the tie moment, Brosnan’s look into the camera after his first kill. Moments like this appear throughout the film: a cut back to Zukovsky’s grin when Bond’s car is destroyed, the pinpoint bullet shot that hits a plate of glass right in front of an unblinking Reynard. Moments like this get increasingly lost as the film pushes on and becomes more and more formulaic and traditional, but they are still there.

That’s what it all comes back to: the film is not the sum of its parts. Moments stand out, but the whole thing really doesn’t. Everything feels a little too pre-packaged. Even an actor as brilliant as Robert Carlyle (the sort of actor everyone said should play a Bond villain) is lost in the mix, his performance as forgettable as a million other “ruthless anarchist” types we’ve seen before. There are some neat homages – I like the painting of Bernard Lee in MI6 HQ – but too much of it feels like more of the same, told with a professionalism that crushes the life out of individualism. So while it has moments that excite and entertain, as well as elements (such as Elektra King) that feel unique and original, too much of it also feels like, well, any other Bond film. For all its energy, it feels like watching a world-class athlete run on the spot.

FINAL COMMENT:This film does get some credit however for how tastefully it handles the final scenes of Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Tragically Llewelyn died in a car crash shortly before the film was released, but his work here is possibly some of the best he contributed to the series. Never let them see you bleed and always have an escape route.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)


Kenneth Branagh struggles to bring Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to life

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Robert De Niro (The Creature), Kenneth Branagh (Victor Frankenstein), Tom Hulce (Henry Clerval), Helena Bonham Carter (Elizabeth), Ian Holm (Baron Frankenstein), John Cleese (Professor Waldman), Aidan Quinn (Captain Robert Walton), Richard Briers (Grandfather), Robert Hardy (Professor Krempe), Trevyn McDowell (Justine Moritz), Celia Imrie (Mrs Mortiz), Cherie Lunghi (Caroline Frankenstein)

In 1994 Kenneth Branagh was the heir of Laurence Olivier: a man who could act, direct and produce, who never had a false step, whose every film was a success. In other words he was ripe for a kicking, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the stick used to beat him. It was practically the founding text of “Branagh-bashing”, for a time one of the favourite sports of the British press.

Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) grows up obsessed with defeating death, traumatised by the death of his mother. Training as a doctor in Vienna, after the murder of his mentor Professor Waldmann (an effectively serious John Cleese), he uses the body of the murderer to create the Creature (Robert De Niro) – but, horrified by what he has created, he flees home to Geneva. While the Creature comes to terms with being an outcast, Victor marries his sweetheart Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) – only for her to become a target when the Creature vows revenge.

Okay the good stuff about this film: the production design is terrific, the Frankenstein house in particular a marvellous set. It’s also a very faithful adaptation, pretty much following the book (apart from a late, horribly melodramatic “Bride of Frankenstein” sequence). Branagh gets some affecting moments out of the film, particularly in the calmer moments – De Niro gives an interesting performance and the retention of the Walton framing device in the Arctic is well done. There is a good film in here. But it’s buried completely under the overblown shouting, swooping cameras and booming music that covers the rest of the film.

Contrary to his reputation as a purveyor of intricate Shakespeare adaptations, Branagh has always been a lover of big movies, who brings an operatic intensity to cinema. The problem is he goes too far here. This is at times so ridiculously overblown and frenetic in its tempo, you start to think Branagh is trying too hard, desperate to make a big budget smash. Wanting to make a big, gory, gothic horror film, he dials everything up to eleven, and the sturm und drang eventually becomes a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Interestingly, this intensity is particularly overbearing in the Frankenstein scenes, rather than those focusing on the Creature. Several scenes are filmed with the camera swooping round in circles over long intense takes, while the score thunders away. This principally happens in scenes of high emotion – the deaths of Frankenstein’s mother and his mentor Waldmann are both operatically overblown (in the latter Branagh literally cranes up and screams “No!”). Eventually it all becomes too much. You are crying out for everyone to take a breath and just deliver a line calmly.

Now I can see what Branagh is doing here. He’s looking to emulate the high-Gothic semi-camp of 1930s horror films. That’s the charitable explanation for why he spends the entire Creature-birthing scene running round topless (he must have spent ages on that chest), with Patrick Doyle’s score booming away, while the camera swoops and sweeps around him. Branagh is partly channelling Colin Clive’s mad scientist from James Whale (he even bellows “Live!” in pure Clive style twice in the film), but by going for overwhelming bombast in his performance, he misses out on making the character relatable. Now Victor is a selfish asshole of course, but we should at least relate to him a little bit: I’m not sure many people can in this film.

It’s a real shame because there is in fact, under the frantic editing and dizzying camerawork, a quieter, more intelligent film trying to get out. Branagh’s Frankenstein is a man deep in trauma about death, unable to cope with losing people, whose fear becomes a dangerous obsession. The romance between Victor and Helena Bonham Carter’s sweetly innocent Elizabeth has a lot of warmth (the chemistry is also excellent: no surprise to hear that the actors started a long term relationship on the set of this film). There are moments here meditating on life and death, but they constantly get lost in the next ridiculous bloody action scene, or explosion of overblown acting.

Similarly, De Niro mines a lot of confused sympathy from the Creature – probably because he seems the quieter and more “normal” person, for all his scars and acts of murder. The sequence with the Creature looking after the family of a blind man (a decent Richard Briers) sees De Niro mine a great deal of vulnerability and innocence from his situation. The contained camera work and restrained acting make these the finest scenes in the film, more memorable than any of the blood and guts that fill the final half hour.

De Niro and Briers: Your only chance to see Travis Bickle and Tom Good share a scene

And those blood and guts are a problem, because this is not a scary film. Not even one little bit. Instead it’s either ridiculous or juvenile – in a sequence where a character literally has their heart ripped out by the Creature, Branagh can’t resist not only having the Creature holding it up to the camera, but for the camera to jump to a close up of the heart literally beating in its hand. Not scary, not gross, just stupid and childish. At any points of tension we get the pounding music and running around and shouting like a Gothic Doctor Who. If only Branagh had taken a breath and treated the material more calmly and sensibly we could have ended up with something creepy and spooky, rather than garish.

It’s a real, real shame because honestly there are some good things in this movie. I’ve mentioned De Niro, but Tom Hulce is also terrific as Clerval and Bonham Carter very good as Elizabeth. There are moments of real class in the design and production – I’ve lambasted Patrick Doyle’s score a bit, but there are some very good tracks in here. The problem, much as it massively pains me to say it because I love him, is Branagh. His performance and direction is just too much: too giddy, too overblown, too frantic, too overwhelming. The film comes across less as a tribute to old style melodramatic horror movies, more a very intelligent gifted man talking down at fans of the genre, giving them what it appears the genre is about on the surface, rather than the depths that actually appeal to people. Despite its merits, the film is not alive, but dead inside.

Time Bandits (1981)


Time travelling roguery in Time Bandits 

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Craig Warnock (Kevin), David Rappaport (Randall), Kenny Baker (Fidgit), Malcolm Dixon (Strutter), Mike Edmonds (Og), Jack Purvis (Wally), Tiny Ross (Vermin), John Cleese (Robin Hood), Sean Connery (Agamemnon), Shelley Duvall (Pansy), Katherine Helmond (Mrs Ogre), Ian Holm (Napoleon), Michael Palin (Vincent), Ralph Richardson (Supreme Being), Peter Vaughan (Winston), David Warner (Evil), Jim Broadbent (Compere)

After leaving Monty Python, each Python went their own way. Terry Gilliam had been the slightly odd one, the eccentric animator who played the weirdos at the edge of the frame. Time Bandits would be pivotal in repositioning him as an ambitious, visionary director with a striking visual sense. It would also allow him (and co-writer Michael Palin) to create a fairytale fable with something for all ages, a film about a child’s view of the world which adults could embrace.

Kevin (Craig Warnock) is a dreamer, a young kid adrift in his parent’s materialistic world. Until one night a gang of dwarves calling themselves “Time Bandits” emerge out of his bedroom cupboard. They have a map that allows them to travel through time and use it to commit crimes and then escape to different centuries. Kevin joins them in their adventures, but none of them know they have attracted the attention of the Evil Genius (David Warner) who wants to use the map to escape his prison and recreate the world in his own image.

I still remember watching this film when I was younger and really enjoying (I must have watched it dozens of times). I have to say it holds up extremely well. Sure Craig Warnock isn’t the most inspired child actor of all time, but he has a wide eyed innocence and enthusiasm that anchors the film really well. Gilliam’s direction is brilliantly good – wild and inventive, like a punk-rock fairytale. The dwarfs make an inspired grouping, each embracing the once-in-a-lifetime chance of playing leading roles.

The main reason for the film’s success is Gilliam. His work is extraordinarily detailed and imaginative, while his visual sense makes shots that cost hundreds of pounds look like millions. Huge swathes of the film are shot with a low-angle lens that allows us to see everything from the perspective of our heroes, and also makes each of these larger-than-life events seem even more awe-inspiring. The design of the film is extraordinary, with striking images confronting you at every turn, either a recreation of events or the bizarre visuals of the “time of wonder”.

And those visuals are outstanding. Can you think of any other film where a knight on horseback bursts out of a bedroom cupboard, charges around the room in medium shot, and then gallops off through a field that has suddenly replaced the bedroom wall? How about an ogre who lives on a ship that is then revealed to be a hat for a giant who lives underwater? Evil’s Fortress is a swaggeringly brilliant triumph of production design, while his goat skulled, tall, hooded monsters must surely have been playing in JK Rowling’s mind when she came up with the Dementors.

The design also echoes the possibility that this is all a child’s fantasy. A careful look at Kevin’s bedroom shows pictures of everything we encounter. The final confrontation with Evil takes place on a set clearly inspired by the Lego bricks, chess board and toys that litter Kevin’s bedroom. 

The playful tone is also reflected in its lampooning of the “adult” world of technology for its dull materialism: Kevin’s parents watch a bullying gameshow (compered by a demonic Jim Broadbent) while sitting on armchairs still in their plastic wrapping. Evil’s obsessions all revolve around lasers and the microchip.

Away from all this, the film has a simple structure. It’s basically a series of really rather fun historical sketches, linked together by an engaging fantasy narrative. These scenes attracted guest star performers, all of whom excel (though it is odd to see them get top billing – Cleese is on screen for about three minutes, but gets top-billing!). 

The guest stars are terrific – Holm is hilarious as a chippy, height-obsessed Napoleon; Cleese very funny as a visiting-Royal-inspired Robin Hood, treating all around him with condescension; Ralph Richardson brings an absent-minded imperiousness and dry wit to his role as God; Connery sprinkles a touch of movie-star bravado as a kindly, gentle Agamemnon (the uncommented on joke being the movie’s ideal father figure is most famous for sacrificing his daughter…). 

If any performer high-jacks the film it’s David Warner as a dry-witted, viciously ego-maniacal Evil Being, getting most of the best lines. A sequence where he obliterates several underlings for minor transgressions hums with dark humour (and punchlines with the accidental obliteration of another minion off screen, met with a sheepish “Sorry”). On top of that, Warner brings just the right level of sinister child’s-nightmareish quality to the role, helped by a striking costume design that makes him look the love-child of a crocodile and a car engine.

The leads of the film (Kevin and the bandits) are extremely well drawn by Palin’s script, each of them with sharply distinctive personalities. David Rappaport (allegedly incredibly unpopular with the others due to his haughty disregard for them) is perfect as the arrogant self-appointed leader, but Jack Purvis is a stand-out as the warmly brave Wally. More than a few commentators have pointed out that the Bandits all serve as representatives of the members of the Monty Python troop, which adds another level of fun watching the film.

Time Bandits is electric good fun. I have no doubt I might find more to criticise without the memory of enjoying it so much when I was younger. Some of the sketches work less well than others – the scene with the ogre doesn’t quite work, and the ending, twistedly funny as it is, does feel slightly abrupt is. But the film never outstays its welcome, and it’s put together with such glee and accomplishment that there is always a line or an image that sticks with you. It’s a dark fairytale for children of all ages – and making something the whole family can enjoy is really quite a feat. Palin and Gilliam would have put together a sensational series of Doctor Who.