★★ | Time rhymes with crime
I’m not a huge fan of the Terry Gilliam film which Taika Waititi’s and Jemaine Clement’s overlong TV series is based on. I saw it as a kid, then didn’t think about it until the Criterion release this past year. Revisiting it was much the same as with most childhood memories. Some of them are best left in Arcadia.
So, in theory, Time Bandits the show is in a prime spot to wriggle into my good graces. The basic premise is still sound, and both Waititi and Clement — despite numerous misses in recent years — are talented filmmakers. The cast even includes the great Lisa Kudrow, who can make anything funnier by her presence alone.
Yet from the very start, it’s clear that Time Bandits won’t be a rollicking good time. By the time the first episode, lasting an exhausting 47 minutes, finished, I realized the next eight hours or so would be a chore. This is a poorly paced series which misses almost every beat. The comedy is mean, the drama is cloying, and every moment intended to evoke even a bit of emotion comes off as twee. It is more in line with present-day Waititi than the sincere oddball he was at the start of his career.
The setup is familiar from Gilliam’s outing. A young boy, Kevin, discovers that his closet is a rift through space and time as a group of interdimensional thieves, calling themselves The Time Bandits, come crashing through his bedroom. He’s thrust into an adventure through historic events, both real and mythical, as he races against God and the Devil to save his parents, who are turned into stone by a demon hunting for the bandits.
Every episode introduces a new time period, and you can tell Apple has spared no expense in putting together a handsome production. Time Bandits looks and sounds great in every way. At least in the wide shots. Once the action moves into anything resembling a set, the series turns into early-aughts Dr. Who.
It doesn’t help that there isn’t anything to distract from the shortcomings. A smart script could easily overcome shoddy directing. But Time Bandits adamantly refuses to mine history for anything resembling funny or inventive. Its jokes are obvious, timid, and, as previously stated, downright mean. Combine that with one-note characters who never expand beyond their initial characteristic, and I never felt like these were the people I wanted to spend my precious time with.
This is a recent trend in Waititi’s filmography: A focus on bad people who have no self-awareness. His earlier films had similar themes, yet they were tempered with a good-natured understanding, allowing audiences to relate to our heroes’ failings. Here, he prods both his characters and audience to the point that it becomes annoying. It’s the cinematic equivalent of irritating someone and following it up with: “It’s just a prank, bro!”
Singular moments promise of a better show. Newcomer Kal-El Tuck is supremely charming as Kevin, the precocious young hero with a love for history. It’s thanks to him the series holds any value whatsoever. When Kevin gets to meet his heroes and marvel at the wonders of the world, learning lessons about growing up in the process, Time Bandits leaves the cynical domain of Waititi into something wholesome and fun. It’s reminiscent of classic children’s stories like The Phantom Tollbooth. Fables about learning from the past, only quite literally in this case.
It’s a shame, then, that these moments are all too fleeting. By the end, when the series goes entirely off the rails into a conclusion and promise of a second season it hasn’t earned, Kevin is lost in the midst of convoluted plotting and aggressively tedious riffing. The series gives us nothing because that would require sincerity, something which it desperately wants to avoid. It’s much easier to be flippant. That way, if the show fails, it never really mattered in the first place.
But that attitude cuts both ways. After all, it’s not like Apple TV+ is bereft of things to watch. There are series that respect my time and investment. Time Bandits is not one of them.