The first Terry Gilliam movie I ever saw was 'Brazil': I was thrilled for a very long time. It was so different from all the things I had seen till then. And in some ways it still is. Then I saw '12 monkeys'. There was again that very sharp and serious movie making coupled with a lots of imagination and fantasy. I was just sitting on the tip of my chair, trying to get every second carved in my memory.
Then I saw 'Baron Munchausen', 'The fisher king' and now finally 'Time bandits'. I couldn't believe that it was the same person making these movies. Though 'The fisher king' was better, 'Baron Munchausen' and 'Time Bandits' just didn't touch me. They are too shallow, not really exciting, sometimes even boring. I think it's because Gilliam is trying to be too Pythonesque in these movies in a not quite genuine Monty Python way. His special way of making SFX just don't work in half serious half trying to be funny movies.
There are of course some very touching or amazing moments, like the part with the giant coming out of the water or the part with Connery beating a monster like creature, but then, who could resist his very charming acting of such a simple and I'm-enjoying-life type of Agamemnon. He seems to be made for it. But I think a movie shouldn't be just a jumble of not really in a logical way connected scenes with great actors in it. I for one still need this very sharp structuring of the plot, like in '12 monkeys', that makes you have a couple of moments of clarity while moving along the story. That's what I miss in 'Time Bandits': when 'God' at the end tells that he had planned it all to test his creation, it just spoils the importance of what has happened before: the whole movie. It's all just trying to be too cheerful for me.
Then I saw 'Baron Munchausen', 'The fisher king' and now finally 'Time bandits'. I couldn't believe that it was the same person making these movies. Though 'The fisher king' was better, 'Baron Munchausen' and 'Time Bandits' just didn't touch me. They are too shallow, not really exciting, sometimes even boring. I think it's because Gilliam is trying to be too Pythonesque in these movies in a not quite genuine Monty Python way. His special way of making SFX just don't work in half serious half trying to be funny movies.
There are of course some very touching or amazing moments, like the part with the giant coming out of the water or the part with Connery beating a monster like creature, but then, who could resist his very charming acting of such a simple and I'm-enjoying-life type of Agamemnon. He seems to be made for it. But I think a movie shouldn't be just a jumble of not really in a logical way connected scenes with great actors in it. I for one still need this very sharp structuring of the plot, like in '12 monkeys', that makes you have a couple of moments of clarity while moving along the story. That's what I miss in 'Time Bandits': when 'God' at the end tells that he had planned it all to test his creation, it just spoils the importance of what has happened before: the whole movie. It's all just trying to be too cheerful for me.
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