YMMV / Time Bandits

• Awesome Music: The opening and closing theme, the rollicking heist music in Italy, the Mycenaean theme, and George Harrison's credits song "Dream Away" are all fantastic.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Even if Kevin's parents were extraordinarily materialistic and negligent towards their son, by the end of the film Kevin is a newly-orphaned 10-year-old boy. It is only alleviated by the implication of an And the Adventure Continues (Agamemnon appearing as a firefighter, the photos, the Supreme Being closing the scene) for Kevin, but this is not made too clear.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The unspoken tension between Agamemnon and his wife is a reference to their fate in Greek mythology: Their marriage ends in murder. It's perhaps best that Kevin isn't around for that.
  • The gold masks worn by Agamemnon's two minions are reproductions of the Mask of Agamemnon, a funeral mask discovered in Mycenae.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: David Warner plays a robotic villain who plans to reshape the universe around the efficiency of computers. Just one year later, Warner would appear in TRON as a computerized villain who wants to take over the world with his superior processing power.
  • One the of the destinations where the Bandits end up is on board the Titanic. In 1997 David Warner had a notable role as a villain in the mega-blockbuster.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Supreme Being's head chasing the Time Bandits.
    "Return what you have stolen from me. Return [the map]. Return the map -- it will put you in great danger. Stop now!"
  • Evil's army. As if a hoard of screeching, 8-foot-tall creatures with hook hands and cow skull heads weren't scary enough, they can also shoot missiles out of their eyes.
  • The game show Kevin's parents watch, Your Money or Your Life, is terrifying. At one point the host is badgering an old woman to answer a question with an unfailing, eerie grin, while her partner (whose leg is in a cast, just to make it even worse) hangs from a rope over a vat of custard. She's terrified beyond reason and can't answer the question, and later we get a shot of the man floating face-down.
• One-Scene Wonder: John Cleese as Robin Hood, Ian Holm as Napoleon and Sean Connery as Agamemnon.
• Quirky Work: The weirdness builds up during the entire movie. Once the protagonists enter the Time of Legends, it gets downright trippy, with the final showdown against Evil as one of the most surreal moments in the history of cinema.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Well, rather a Brick Joke. The Supreme Being notes about pure evil that "one drop could turn you all into hermit crabs". When Kevin's parents wind up coming in contact with it later, they just blow up.
  • A movie about Agamemnon with Sean Connery as the star would have been awesome. It is sad his performance is relegated to a few scenes.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jim Broadbent is the host of Your Money or Your Life.
  Host: The map. Please.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • When two gates appear at the same time, one is more lightly shaded, probably due to the animation process of layering on two gates.
  • It's easy to see that the crane shot of Kevin walking through his yard is played backwards because the plumes of smoke are being sucked back into his parents' ashy remains.
  • In the stinger sequence of the Time Bandits all laughing, you can easily spot the moment where the film reverses and plays backwards to lengthen it by another second or two.
• Unintentional Period Piece: A lot of the technology and technological references are clearly from the late 1970s going into the early 1980s.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: In spite of the main character being a child, the movie isn't really meant for young kids. The film was rated PG, but this was before PG-13 was introduced. Some children would get pretty alarmed by the violence and scary imagery and Sudden Downer Ending.

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