If a remake of Terry Gilliam‘s 1981 masterpiece Time Bandits, recently released on 4K by Criterion, absolutely had to be made, it’s not the worst idea in the world to get Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement to succeed Monty Python alumni Gilliam and Michael Palin. Both duos share a great sense of amusement in juxtaposing mundane concerns and modern day-to-day problems with fantastical settings, and Waititi’s directorial credits include comedies about gods and historical monsters.
Unfortunately for them, the actual worst idea in the world is remaking Time Bandits for TV to begin with. A legacy sequel was presumably ruled out because most of the key cast members are dead, but the movie itself is so totally, thoroughly Gilliam at the peak of his powers that it’s a task akin to remaking Blue Velvet or Star Wars. Every once in a while, there’s an odds-defier on that score like the Fargo TV series, but Time Bandits ain’t it (Yes, 12 Monkeys exists, but that was a remake even in Gilliam’s hands, so it’s a fairer game). Although Time Bandits 2024 gets some things very right, it replaces the anarchy and dark satire of Gilliam with plot points and aimless humor that feel like studio notes he would never have taken.
Kevin’s Great
Let’s start with the good. Relative newcomer Kal-El Tuck is a great find as Kevin and a superior actor to Craig Warnock in the original. With roughly the same story as the movie spread out over a ten-episode arc, we spend a lot more time with Kevin and his family at the beginning. His clueless parents are still addicted to the latest technology, and he has a bratty younger sister (Kiera Thompson), but they all genuinely seem to care about him and manage to humor his history-nerd obsessiveness that bores them comatose. Kevin is a dork who gets bullied, sure, but he also seems to genuinely like being alone, and he certainly doesn’t take advantage of the Internet much, although he does cite Wikipedia later in the story.
Structurally, the first few episodes feel like the movie’s storyline beats, establishing a crew of wanna-be robbers who used to work for the Supreme Being, i.e., God, but became frustrated and stole his map of time holes to escape across history. The middle handful of episodes are reminiscent of older live-action and animated time travel shows, like Voyagers or Mr. Peabody and Sherman, with self-contained episodes in different historical moments. In a move to diversify history a bit, King Agamemnon’s role as the fatherly figure is replaced by Mali emperor Mansa Musa, which should send more than a few children and adults to the Internet to look him up. For the finale, which, like the movie, takes everyone to the Time of Legends, things happen that frankly might induce Time Bandits fans to flip off their TV sets. It’s an aggravating culmination that clearly anticipates an unlikely second season.
Small Stakes?
The bandits themselves, who annoyingly and explicitly refer to themselves as “The Time Bandits” multiple times, face the Peter Dinklage dilemma. Should they be all little-person actors, as in the original, and face accusations that actors with dwarfism are being othered? Or should they be regular-sized folks, thereby closing off opportunities for little people? Waititi has found an odd compromise: other characters who work for the Supreme Being are played by little people, while the bandits themselves are mostly average-sized.
Gilliam primarily cast as he did so he could keep the camera at a child’s-eye height, with the added bonus that such positioning allowed for filming smaller portions of sets and letting the audience’s imagination fill in the rest. Apple TV, however, appears to have thrown more money at this production than anyone would ever trust Gilliam with, and massive CG-scapes in every setting are the notable result.
So in place of David Rappaport’s Randall, we now have Lisa Kudrow as Penelope, using sarcasm and wisecracks where Rappaport alternated between sincerely callous and sweet. Kudrow’s an underrated actor generally, but it’s a difficult part as written, with a lot of issues we can’t spoil here. Let’s just say the character shouldn’t have had to need additional motivation beyond “Working for God sucks; let’s steal his stuff instead.”
Mismatched, Mismanaged
The rest of the team includes an Irish-accented actor named Alto (Tadhg Murphy), an autistic-coded map-reader named Widgit (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), barely competent empath Judy (Charlyne Yi), and Scandinavian-ish strongman Bittelig (Rune Temte), whose deer-in-headlights stare and nervous line delivery makes him come off like a Will Ferrell character. It’s fair to say they get more character development than the original dwarfs, but they also feel far less unified as a crew.
As for God/The Supreme Being and Satan/Pure Evil, they’re played by Waititi and Clement, respectively, and here’s one of the major symptoms of what’s wrong. Waititi’s take on God is weird, but not in an interesting way — he cares nothing for humans and wants to wipe them out for no particular reason other than a fresh start. If there’s any thought put into why God is like this, it doesn’t come across beyond the fact that Waititi likely just thought it was funny. Gilliam had Ralph Richardson acting like a distracted CEO, a pointedly satirical take played brilliantly by a master thespian.
Clement mostly imitates David Warner’s performance, which makes for a reasonably funny impersonation. The whole reason Warner was funny, though, was that he played the role completely seriously while surrounded by absurdity. His version of Evil represented, among other things, technology and its temptations. Waititi and Clement’s versions don’t seem to represent anything.
History Mysteries
The same goes for the historical periods visited. Gilliam, again, had a strong point of view about everything he was depicting. Robin Hood is a hypocritical fable! Napoleon’s, well, Napoleon complex drove him to violence! Next to modern-day couch-potato parents, even a brutal warrior like Agamemnon looks good as a dad! The director wasn’t above pushing the jokes to absurd extremes, but there was a social-disruptive theme beneath it all. Waititi’s characters long to be normal in a way Gilliam’s never would. Gilliam unmercifully killed off Kevin’s parents at the end of the movie as extreme karma for their inability to listen or pay attention. Waititi offers take-backsie loopholes for many mortal dangers.
At the best of times, the show can come close. The third episode, set mostly in medieval England and directed by What We Do in The Shadows’ Jackie Van Beek, has some pointed and amusing critiques of authoritarian structures and vaccine-deniers through the filter of the Black Plague and a Sheriff of Nottingham-like villain. (She also gets that adding dinosaurs is usually a net good.) An entire Ice Age tribe learns to speak in aggressive Cockney slang in episode 7, and it’s a fun detour from the main plotline.
Baseline Boundaries
More often, though, there’s nothing deeper than the Earl of Sandwich (Mark Gatiss, having fun) being a standard-issue foppish dandy or the Mayans being more civilized than expected. A monstrous assassin-creature, who ironically looks more like the Marvel comics version of Gorr the God-Butcher than Christian Bale, has an incongruously normal New Zealand accent because it’s Waititi regular Rachel House. A trip to the ’90s feels like an attempt to shoehorn in a Back to the Future remake as well. This is just the kind of shtick we’ve come to expect from Waititi and his collaborators, and no more.
All of this is a precursor to an ending that’s so tone-deaf it actually betrays any emotional investment in the thing, devaluing and disrespecting both the character of Penelope and our interest in any sort of closure. Movies and shows that send people away mad tend to blind them to any good that came before — Game of Thrones knows this better than anyone — so let’s be at least a little kind and not forget that Tuck feels like a promising young actor, and if kids watching learn a bit more about the history they aren’t taught in school, good.
That said, can we please find the time hole that leads back to the greenlighting of this series, and stop it from happening?
Grade: 1.5/5
Time Bandits’ first two episodes debut on Apple TV+ on July 24.
