Time Bandits’ second outing serves up a feast and a few surprises

In the followup to Time Bandits’ premiere, which staked out some clear differences from Terry Gilliam’s original film (more jokes and historical women, to name two obvious ones), the team plonks down into snowy wilderness, with the Bandits ready to leave Kevin literally out in the cold with a pack of neanderthals. He protests, “That’s not my family.” And they push back, “But they look exactly like you,” as the ancient people grunt and wave their arms, hair disheveled, wearing scraps of hide. In a subtle transition from the previous episode, the team turns to see Kevin shivering and takes pity on the boy, deciding not to leave him there after all. As Widgit the map-holder explains, the location was correct (Bingley, England), though the time period was not (50,000 BCE rather than 2024 AD). And Fianna the Huntress, with her grizzled, Te Kā-like appearance, is waiting for them there liiiiiiike a stone, eyes glowing from within her rocky disguise.

They portal from here to what would eventually become Mexico. (The giant Mayan pyramids give it away.) The Bandits’ plan, of course, is to steal as much as possible, and Kevin has become comfortable enough this episode to begin voicing his opposition to this, due, in some part, to his impression that the ancient Mayans are highly punitive and engage in graphic rituals of human sacrifice). He tells the others that they chop their victims’ heads off and put them in their torsos, cut their fingers off and stick them in their mouths, among other things. Still, as they are discovered by Lady Sak Kʼukʼs army and led through the village, offered juicy, orange fruit at every turn, the Bandits readily accept all gifts and sit down to a royal feast as the queen’s honored guests.

Some elements of this second episode tend to feel a bit forced. When Kevin sits with the queen’s son at the kids’ table and the prince offers that his mother has sacrificed so much for him, Kevin leaps up in alarm to tell the rest of the Bandits at the adult table, believing this to be some kind of confirmation that they will be sacrificed. Penelope’s rigid pursuit of treasure, even going so far as to ask the leader of the Mayan army what their most valuable possessions are, specifically something that might “fit in a bag,” feels like a little much, too. When they’re toured around the room in the palace that houses the Mayans’ most precious handcrafted jewelry and a jade toad Sak Kʼukʼ highlights as being her favorite, Penelope snags it immediately, resulting in a short scuffle with Kevin. 

This all leads to the point at which the queen, prince, army leader, and the Bandits ascend to the top of the pyramid, which the crew now thinks to be the final step in their impending sacrifice, only to be shown that the ritual to which they had been invited was, in fact, a nice one: watching the sunset and eating yummy fruit. The only thing that would compromise their enjoyment of this moment—and their right to go on living—would be if any of them were discovered to be thieves, loathed by the Mayans. Their bags are searched and as a roundish green item emerges from Penelope’s bag, with Kevin looking on, disappointed, it’s revealed to be an avocado—not the jade toad. Nobody is mad. But the team does have to go, and they quickly make their exit.

As they seek their next portal to take Kevin home at last, they trace it to the bottom of a massive gorge. Kevin recalls Cassandra’s premonition that he and the crew would jump from a cliff together, and is all set to do it. Judy (Charlene Yi), taking the queen’s leadership advice to “take that leap” as literally as possible, is ready, too. (This is another pretty forced moment in this episode, to be honest). Their lost, but revered, fellow bandit Susan, Widgit says, would have jumped. Penelope reminds him, “She did; that’s why she’s dead.” But down they go anyway and they wind up safely back in Kevin’s modern-day bedroom, exactly one moment before they left.

Lisa Kudrow, Rune Temte, Kal-El Tuck, Tadhg Murphy, Charlyne Yi, and Roger Jean Nsengiyumva in Time Bandits (Photo: Apple TV+)

Kevin’s parents are downstairs scrolling their phones while watching a TV show, giving us a meta joke about it “falling off” around the second episode as the crew and Kevin dodge the Supreme Being one last time (he was still storming around Kevin’s room) to say their goodbyes upstairs. Kevin thanks them for making him feel like part of a team, to which Penelope retorts, “This is a team of bandits, and you are very judgy about bandits.” They hand him back all of his stuff they stole the last time they were in his room, which takes them a while (they stole a lot of stuff), when they’re startled by a loud noise from downstairs: Fianna has risen from her rock and shot his parents into lumps of coal with her glowing lazer eyes. Kevin scoops them into his pocket, fearing that they’re dead. Penelope tells him, “Well, they’re not well, let’s just say that” and agrees to let him go with them through the wardrobe once more, allowing him the potential to go back in time and save his old mom and dad at some point. Sadly, they leave his poor oblivious sister blasting tunes through her pink Razr cat-ear headphones. Will they address that next episode? Let’s hope so!

Rather than end on that dark note, that three-faced Supreme Being head lifts up to reveal that he’s a normal-looking guy under there, played by Taika Waititi. He’s in some kind of pale-blue heaven with long, flowy hair, approving and/or shutting down various creations people on his team show to him: yes to the platypus, no to purple hybrid “beet-nanas.” A cherub offers him “cherub spice” in a teacup and reaches down his pants to offer more, grossing everyone out. (Sipping it later, SB says it tastes like urine, too.) He’s very flustered by the Time Bandits opening portals willy-nilly now that they have access to the map, but rather than go into that, he takes a moment to draw his assistants near to tell them about his “super-duper cool new project” that is also “super-duper top secret.” Unfortunately, Pure Evil’s buddy Damon (not to be confused with demon—that’s another guy) is in the room, spying behind them. How do they not catch that?

It feels like I’ve been a bit more critical of this episode. Maybe it’s the slower pace or the way some things ring false. But it still offers plenty of laughs, as well as some newfound, welcome tenderness. This episode signals a shift in Penelope, who is developing a growing fondness for Kevin. Lisa Kudrow’s performance communicates this beautifully during the feast scene when the kid shares that his parents say that he does everything wrong. “They say that to you? Out loud like that?” she asks.But at this point, she merely suggests they have a talk when he gets home. It’s later, after she has heard his parents laugh at the mere suggestion that he might have visitors in his room with him, then finally after his parents are “coaled,” that she comes around and welcomes him with an open heart, saying, “You’re coming with us.” It’s this first glimmer of warmth, even more so than the cliffhanger, that has me excited to watch what develops as we head into the third episode next week. 

Stray observations

• • Kevin’s parents do explode at the end of the Time Bandits film, much to the chagrin of producer Denis O’Brien. When he suggested Gilliam change the ending, he threatened to take a nail to the negative instead, thereby destroying the work that had cost them so much to make. Needless to say, Gilliam got his way. He wanted to see the parents punished for not listening to their child. Guess what? Kids don’t want that. They’ll still attach to crappy parents. 
• • That last tidbit came from the documentary An Accidental Studio: The Story of HandMade Films. I recommend it. Gilliam doesn’t come across…great. He also tells a story about displacing vertebrae in the late Shelly Duval’s neck when he crashed through the ceiling of her character’s carriage, with her in there, to demonstrate how the Bandits were going to do it. Eric Idle calls him a bitch.
• • In another moment that felt like a nod to Monty Python, Penelope tells the team to “employ the scurry,” and they all literally scurry like cartoon characters. It’s kind of a “silly walk,” if you think about it.
• • In the previous episode, Widgit mentioned a corner of the map that had gone missing. I wonder when that might come into play?
• • I appreciated the emphasis on how colonizers tarnish the way the people they’ve colonized are perceived (hence Kevin mistaking a sunset-watching, fruit-eating ritual for the prelude to human sacrifice), but the way that it was handled in this episode felt a little on the nose. Still. Nice to see it here.
• • My kid has those cat-ear headphones Kevin’s sister is wearing towards the end, and they are indeed as cool as they look.