'Time Bandits' review: Apple TV+ series jumps from one historical era to another with spirit and sly wit

Terry Gilliam’s wildly creative 1981 fantasy adventure “Time Bandits” is often referred to as a “cult classic,” but it was actually a pretty big hit and garnered laudatory reviews back in the day, opening in the No. 1 position at the box office and eventually grossing the modern-day equivalent of $145 million, more than eight times the budget. When it was announced Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris were reimagining the film as a 10-part series for Apple TV+, my initial reaction was to wonder if yet another reboot of a 1980s classic was even necessary. But the good news is that “Bandits 2.0” finds that sweet spot between simply tracing over the original and straying too far from the source material, the result being a breezy, slyly humorous, rousing adventure suitable for all but the very youngest of viewers.

Even when it’s scary, it’s mostly funny.

When your series lead is an 11-year-old boy, so much is riding on the casting, and “Time Bandits” hits a home run in that department with young Kal-El Tuck, who is hilarious and charming and quick without ever overdoing it. Tuck plays a precocious history buff named Kevin Haddock, who lives in the town of Bingley in West Yorkshire, has no friends and drives his parents (James Dryden and Felicity Ward) and sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson) mad with his obsession for studying the distant past and his penchant for telling long-winded anecdotes about events, whether great or obscure. (For Kevin’s birthday, he opts for a trip to Woodhenge, where Dad quips, “Maybe this place was built to perform executions. They brought people here and bored them to death!”)

Almost any other kid would be terrified by a marauding band of misfit time travelers crashing through a portal and landing in his bedroom, but Kevin is mostly thrilled. Through a couple of quick plot contrivances, Kevin winds up joining these Time Bandits on their quest to steal the world’s greatest treasures, with the help of a special map.

Lisa Kudrow is Penelope, the sorta-kinda de facto head of these merry idiots; as Penelope puts it, “I’m not the leader, but I am the one in charge.” Here’s Penelope, explaining the map to Kevin: “It is not just a map. It is a chart. ... A celestial chart of the anomalies and portals of the intimately interwoven intricacies of time, space, good and bad, and all the dimensions, including one, two, three and four. And it allows us to travel throughout the universe.”

Ah, got it!

Kudrow is a very modern actor who might seem a curious choice for the role of Penelope, but she’s pure comedy gold in the role, as are the other actors playing Time Bandits:

• Tadhg Murphy is Alto, a so-called “master of disguise,” who only wants to be an actor and dreams of performing onstage.
• Roger Jean Nsengiyumva is Widgit, the map reader who often makes terrible miscalculations, landing the gang in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Charlyne Yi is Judy, an empath who “can get inside your mind,” or so Penelope claims. (Judy, to Kevin: “You’re sad.” Kevin: “This is the happiest day of my life.” Judy: “I’m new at this.”)
• Rune Temte is Bittelig, a brute who according to Penelope “has the strength of seven average-strength men. You think seven? Let’s say seven.”

(In Gilliam’s film, the Time Bandits were played by actors with dwarfism, which is not the case here. In response to criticism of this choice, Clement told the Associated Press the showrunners wrestled with whether it was right “to stereotype little people as magical creatures.” The series does feature little people in minor roles that will reportedly be expanded if there’s a Season 2.)

The ongoing plot has Clement as “Pure Evil” and Taika Waititi as “Supreme Being” going to extreme measures to gain possession of the map, but the time-traveling format of the series also allows for set-piece episodes in which the team gets involved in all sorts of madness and mayhem through the centuries, from the Ice Age to the Trojan War to Medieval Times to Prohibition-era Harlem. There’s even a “Back to the Future” type adventure when Kevin and Saffron find themselves in 1996 and interacting with their parents before their parents even met. (Glancing at a chart of pop hits, Saffron deadpans, “It’s like mom’s ‘on the wine’ playlist.”)

One of the many pleasures in “Time Bandits” is how Penelope and company alternate between trying to get rid of Kevin and telling him he’s useless and remembering he’s a kid and oh by the way, his knowledge of history is invaluable. Kevin doesn’t have the strength of seven average-strength men or even one below-average-strength man, but he’s seven times smarter than the lot of ‘em.