Talking about Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

[madhair60]

Fucking love it. Easily my favourite Python film. Bizarre, macabre, gorgeously shot and of course v. funny.

[DrGreggles]

It's alright. Some good bits, some less that good bits.
Definitely the worst Python film though IMHO.
Despite this.

[neveragain]

No Dr Greggles I won't have it. Often consider it my favourite (though they should have kept the post-Creosote scene for later, it makes that section drag a bit) and honestly don't find very much of it weak at all. It's so violent, varied, grotesque and genuinely angry. That's what makes the difference for me, most of the sketches have a definite target that they want to put the boot in. Still laced with silliness of course.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance is visually brilliant too.

[EOLAN]

Love all three films. What can be considered my favourite probably depends on my mood. Probably peters out the worse of the three films which may impact many people's feeling. As stated in so many places; they probably should have returned to Mr Cresoste at the end over the credits to have Eric Idle's waiter telling the audience to "Fuck Off" right at the end.

Also has two of the great musical numbers: "Every Sperm is Sacred" and "the Universe Song". And I seen it said that most of the popular two person sketches generally involve Cleese and Palin (with Nudge Nudge considered the exception); this film has a sublime two person sketch with Chapman's great contraception Protestant rant turning on his lovely wife Idle.

[the]

Awkward, disjointed, ill-tempered, raw. Got to be my favourite too.

A fitting end as the last proper Python project too - they could've gone out telling a daft fable, but instead we get sketch vignettes and high-concept stuff.

[Brundle-Fly]

I love it too. Still really near the knuckle as far as comedy films go.

When I saw it at the cinema at the time I genuinely couldn't fathom why they got this unknown American Jewish actor to do the finale number. Thick.



As pointed out by someone on the net, he's uncannily like Jeff Goldblum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kntQNeSge5s

[madhair60]

I find the whole film to be very melancholy. The sequence where Idle's waiter leads the viewer to his childhood home gives me a lump in my throat just thinking about it. And of course that ends on a great damp squib too.

[Beagle 2]

It's everything you want from them really, hilarious, challenging, experimental and unsettling. As a piece of work you would have to say that it hits the post a few times and could certainly have been better, everything up to the middle of the films flows beautifully and then it all kind of falls to bits, but if it had been more polished and cohesive, it wouldn't have been such a mindfuck when you saw it for the first time. I remember thinking "Well, I really wasn't expecting that" when I saw it as it was the last thing of theirs I'd seen.

Marching up and down the square might be my favourite performance by Palin.

[madhair60]

Marching up and down the square might be my favourite performance by Palin.

Huge grin across my face being reminded of this.

[Beagle 2]

Also, I love how 80s it all is, there's a sort of Gerald Scarfe vibe about the whole thing, and it would just have looked shit if it was done even ten years later.

[Beagle 2]

Huge grin across my face being reminded of this.

One for your other thread - the bit where his hat nearly comes off is the most I've ever seen my mate laugh.

[Beagle 2]

I will say that I didn't find Mr Creosote very funny on first viewing and am somewhat bemused that it has this iconic status now - the Pythons themselves are clearly very fond of it. Just seemed like a bit of a joke-free filler set piece bit to me. It's no "A tiger? In Africa?".

[Replies From View]

The fishy fishy fish segment is perfect.  Great film throughout though.  For many years I didn't appreciate it as much as their other two films, due to the sketch format, but I now like the way it brings their work full circle.

Rubbing linseed oil into the school cormorant continues to be one of my favourite images ever, and a strangely satisfying series of words too.

[Cold Meat Platter]

The whole school section is just fucking hilarious, the school cormorant, the sycophantic hymn and the absurdly detailed sex education to completely blasé children.

[Brundle-Fly]

I will say that I didn't find Mr Creosote very funny on first viewing and am somewhat bemused that it has this iconic status now - the Pythons themselves are clearly very fond of it. Just seemed like a bit of a joke-free filler set piece bit to me. It's no "A tiger? In Africa?".

Mr Creosote is/ was iconic because I don't think cinema audiences had seen anything as gross as that before in a comedy film. With the exception of The Exorcist (1973) I can't remember ever seeing projectile vomiting on screen before that. Compared to what gross out stuff that has come since, it might seem a bit tame.

[madhair60]

Christ, Mr Creosote is hilarious. The fucking fish: "Oh, shit!"

[Cold Meat Platter]

The cleaning lady soldiering on as wave after wave of spew bounces off her back.

[Twed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m_0ENIw4os

[Bhazor]

When I saw it at the cinema at the time I genuinely couldn't fathom why they got this unknown American Jewish actor to do the finale number. Thick.

Well my hats are all fucked.

[Brundle-Fly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m_0ENIw4os

Windsor Davies: Where's Graham, boys?

Bill Oddie: Don't ask.

[famethrowa]

The final TV drifting off into space while playing the Python TV intro is perfect and I wish that had been the absolute end of the canon. Well, for me it is.

[itsfredtitmus]

I wish the entire film was just stuff in the style of The Fish

[bgmnts]

Some of the weirdest, funniest and darkest stuff they have done but its not as good or as funny overall as Grail or Brian.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance "short" is quite the spectacle.

[Steven]

"Hey I didn't even eat the mousse.."

[shh]

'This man is about to die...'

The whole school section is just fucking hilarious, the school cormorant, the sycophantic hymn and the absurdly detailed sex education to completely blasé children.

Yeah, starts out with a fairly standard piece of Pythonesque reversal (kids wait for teacher to turn up to misbehave), then ends with the touching organ-scored segue into the trenches, where public school boys were killed in disproportionate numbers.

They got the Grand Prix at cannes for this, although a quick look at wiki suggests Terry only went on to direct Wind in the Willows and some Julie Walters vehicle (discounting the recent Simon Pegg film which I haven't the guts to watch). Did he not fancy it? In the same period you had Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway & Bill Forsyth more or less at their peak.

[Revelator]

I will say that I didn't find Mr Creosote very funny on first viewing and am somewhat bemused that it has this iconic status now - the Pythons themselves are clearly very fond of it.

From what I remember, it was placed in the rejects pile during the script read-through, until Cleese called Palin and Jones and said the sketch has possibilities. He wanted to play the waiter and liked the idea of one little mint causing Mr. Creosote's blow-up.

The key to MOL for me is Jones's remark (in one of Kim Howard Johnson's Python books) about how in the 80s everything seemed to have gone sour. MOL is Monty Python's Flying Circus resurrected for the 80s, and it confronts the loss of 60s optimism with increased aggression and disenchanted anger. It's the purest expression of Python on film, even if it's not a satisfying narrative.

[saltysnacks]

I find the film depressing, it actually makes me depressed. Not saying that's a bad thing though.

[saltysnacks]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m_0ENIw4os

I have the opposite of face blindness, so it was never an issue for me. I've never been fooled by a disguise when the person's face is at least somewhat visible.

[fucking ponderous]

All the things I could say have already been said, but I love the darkness and anger of it, and the grimy grotesque near-dystopian early 80's feel. It's one of my favorite things ever.

[Cold Meat Platter]

I have the opposite of face blindness, so it was never an issue for me. I've never been fooled by a disguise when the person's face is at least somewhat visible.

No, the opposite of face blindness is arse blindness. Not quite as debilitating but still inconvenient.