Monty Python animator Terry Gilliams‘ humorous 1981 fantasy TIME BANDITS follows the story of a young boy joins a group of renegade dwarves on an unpredictable journey through time. Gilliam mostly achieves a tricky balancing act in his second feature as sole director, creating a dark, irreverent comedy disguised as a family adventure. Particularly amusing are the boy’s encounters with various historical figures, including an entertainment-starved Napoleon (Ian Holm), a powerful Agamemnon (Sean Connery), and a surprisingly stuffy Robin Hood, embodied by Gilliam’s Python cohort John Cleese. Episodic by nature, the film carries its own, larger narrative, which concerns the pursuit of the dwarves and their time-traveling map by the Supreme Being. The combination of Gilliam‘s visual exuberance and the witty script (by Gilliam and Python alum Michael Palin) ensures an entertaining, if erratic, journey. With Shelley Duvall, Katharine Helmond, Jim Broadbent, Craig Warnock.

“A cheerfully irreverent lark — part fairy tale, part science fiction and part comedy.” (New York Times)

“Terry Gilliam fills the screen with bizarre images, and directs with a breathless ingenuity.” (Time Out)

“This is the only live-action movie I’ve seen that literally looks like pages out of Heavy Metal magazine.” (Roger Ebert)

Sunday, July 26
Doors 9:00 pm | Movie 9:30 pm
Advance tickets $15 HERE | $15 at the door

Wednesday, July 29
Doors 8:15 pm | Movie 8:45 pm
Advance tickets $15 HERE | $15 at the door

*Minors welcome in the balcony. Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Rio Theatre Groupons and passes OK. Please redeem at the door.

PLEASE NOTE: All of the Rio Theatre’s screenings are operating at a sharply reduced capacity. We can’t guarantee availability of tickets at the door, so advance tickets for all screening events are strongly recommended. Our online box office can be found at www.riotheatretickets.ca. Online sales for every screening automatically end 1 hour before any given showtime.

TIME BANDITS (Terry Gilliam, 1981 / 116 mins / PG) Young history buff Kevin can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs emerge from his closet one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being, they’ve purloined a map charting all of the holes in the fabric of time and are using it to steal treasures from different historical eras. Taking Kevin with them, they variously drop in on Napoleon, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon before the Supreme Being catches up with them.