I got through time bandits with gritted teeth hoping it would find its feet and it didn’t. Much of it felt like watching a high school comedy troupe absolutely bombing but with an oblivious self-satisfaction over how funny they think they are. It earned about two smiles from me through the entire 10 episodes. Far more often my response was to internally beg them to stop the running joke that just was gratingly unfunny (scurry…SUSAN). And then it had an ending that had me wanting to throw my tv on the floor.
This reimagining of Time Bandits swaps out the original film’s eccentricity for a more family-friendly sensibility, delivering an energetic adventure that gets more absorbing as it goes along.
I would say that it is OK if you haven’t seen the original film. It gets better after a couple of episodes, and the historical setting of the week works reasonably well after that. The last couple of episodes were a bit of a mess and they have obviously left this open for a second series, rather than just having the original open, and rather bleak, ending.
I think Lisa Kudrow was miscast. Apparently they had someone else in mind initially and it looks like they re-wrote the part. However, my wife pointed out that it would have been far more suited to Diane Morgan as written.
It’s a pity, really, as I have enjoyed most things Taika Waititi has done and I think if he had been allowed to make the humour a bit more “New Zealand” it would have worked well, but probably not been entirely suitable as mainstream family viewing.
I suppose really I just want to watch the film again, which was pretty much faultless. Even the closing titles featured a decent throwaway track from George Harrison:
I was conscious I was just being a grumpy brat after my reaction to the first two so stopped to check some reviews to see if I was being harsh and the first two I found both slated it and for the same reasons that were bothering me. Oh well.
Watched 2 episodes of this last night. Quiet a lot of the stuff is fairly well known and common knowledge, but it does bring up some new stuff which is interesting like the doctor that treated Virgil and Morgan was one of the first doctors to link dirty hands during surgery and infections, so was an early practitioner of washing his hands prior to conducting surgery.
It was fucking wank mate, that was the problem. YES YES! Odd that all the review bombers who we all know exist and target woke programs went after HOTD for having black characters and lesbians. Oh, no they didn’t because it was brilliant.
