Talking about Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

[Ferris]

Put Life of Brian on, inspired by this thread. Bloody lovely. Mmmmm.

Edit: Brian reaffirming his Jewish heritage - "I'm a Red Sea pedestrian, mum! And proud of it!"

[Kelvin]

[Crimson Permanent Assurance is] tremendous. How could anyone dislike it?

It's just fucking boring. A nice idea, great visuals, but stretched over far, far too long. Gilliam would have taken the same idea and made it into a 60 second sketch in the original series. In fact, even in Gilliam's own films, you imagine he'd have broken the visuals up with characters talking and moving the plot along. 

It's also totally at odds with the pace and tone of Python in general, and so feels like a really bad way to open the film - at least at that length.

[Jockice]

I think the Every Sperm Is Sacred sketch is the greatest thing Monty Python ever did. I've mentioned this before, but the bloke on the big bike in the crowd at the end cracks me up every single time. But the rest of the film doesn't really do it for me. Or didn't. I haven't seen it for a few years. I did have an argument with a mate once who reckoned the whole film was Python's greatest work and since one of the main purposes of our friendship was to oppose each other's likes and dislikes I of course venomously disagreed. But I really don't feel that strongly about it. It's just (to use an overused cliche) a bit meh.

Apart from Crimson Permanent Assurance of course. Which is self-satisfied bollocks.

[Jockice]

The hard left in general, I thought. Having been to a few Union conferences, I can attest to it's accuracy.

I can vouch for this too. I will now tell my anecdote about being friends with members of the SWP and RCP, both of whom urged me to join their particular gangs. I never did but once got talked into going on a protest with some SWP members. Then the RCP turned up. Great, some unity for once I thought - before realising that they'd come to protest against the protest...

[Ferris]

It's just fucking boring. A nice idea, great visuals, but stretched over far, far too long. Gilliam would have taken the same idea and made it into a 60 second sketch in the original series. In fact, even in Gilliam's own films, you imagine he'd have broken the visuals up with characters talking and moving the plot along. 

It's also totally at odds with the pace and tone of Python in general, and so feels like a really bad way to open the film - at least at that length.

That's part of why it works for me, it goes on for too long and becomes funny again. Stewart Lee stole his entire act from it.

It is a masterpiece of absurdity.

[yesitsme]

Put Life of Brian on, inspired by this thread. Bloody lovely. Mmmmm.

Edit: Brian reaffirming his Jewish heritage - "I'm a Red Sea pedestrian, mum! And proud of it!"

Give me a funnier film.  I'll let you argue Spinal Tap, I'll let you argue Blazing Saddles, hell, I'll even let you argue Spaceballs - but nothing comes close to LoB in terms of laughs per second.

The Sermon on the Mount - speak up! Can't hear a bloody word, big nose, cheesemakers, ooh, that's nice - they've had a hell of a time, stop picking your nose! the fight, the antipathetic Roman guards. 

There are more laughs in that one scene alone than anything made in the last ten years.

[Blumf]

"He has a wife, you know"

[yesitsme]

"He has a wife, you know"

Yes! Fucking brilliant line delivered brilliantly.  The whole thing is great, every line quotable.

Who here hasn't gone 'Oooh, you lucky barstard!' or 'You, lucky, lucky, bastard' or spoken about 'derring-do'?

Little 'un says 'Aquaduct' in 'that' voice now because when she was doing the Romans at school they literally had to list all the things the Romans had done for us.  I kept saying 'aquaduct' and now so does she.

One day she'll find out why, hopefully.

I do like MoL but it's more art than comedy.

[Twed]

"He has a wife, you know"

That is the best line of that routine for me. He's saying it because he knows the wife's name will have some kind of perverse power over them. Really poking the hornet's nest. His near-corpsing face coupled with an expression somewhere between malicious mischief and rage.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

It's also totally at odds with the pace and tone of Python in general, and so feels like a really bad way to open the film - at least at that length.

While I personally love CPA, I do agree with this - anyone preparing themselves for the very specific Monty Python flavour will likely be disappointed by the Gilliam solo effort.

When Accountancy Shanty starts playing - along with the sudden, bathetic end of the short - we get a glimpse of a more recognisably 'Python' tone, but it's completely at odds with the rest of the much more ponderous piece.

[Jockice]

Give me a funnier film.  I'll let you argue Spinal Tap, I'll let you argue Blazing Saddles, hell, I'll even let you argue Spaceballs - but nothing comes close to LoB in terms of laughs per second.

The Sermon on the Mount - speak up! Can't hear a bloody word, big nose, cheesemakers, ooh, that's nice - they've had a hell of a time, stop picking your nose! the fight, the antipathetic Roman guards. 

There are more laughs in that one scene alone than anything made in the last ten years.

Airplane. I saw both films for the first time in the same sitting you know.

[yesitsme]

Airplane. I saw both films for the first time in the same sitting you know.

Funny yes, but funnier?  I don't think so.  Lots of great, fast paced gags, lots that you need to watch the film again and again to get and ones in there for all the family.

Love the film.  It's not better than LoB.

[Blumf]

Airplane. I saw both films for the first time in the same sitting you know.

Oooh, you lucky barstard!

[Ferris]

The aspect I really enjoyed watching Life of Brian again was the subtle digs at religion. Like the know it all bloke at the sermon of the mount immediately leaping to a nonsense conclusion and trumpeting it as higher wisdom "of course, it applies to anyone working in the dairy industry". It's "ahhhh, do you not see?" but decades earlier.

Ditto the people holding shoes on sticks vs gourds on sticks during the "yes, we're all individuals" bit after the followers divide between the shoes and the gourds in the previous scene - you can see doctrine being established in the background. Lovely stuff.

I spotted George Harrison right away as well. What do I win?

[yesitsme]

'...I should know, I've followed a few!'

'...don't you want to haggle?'

Jones' face when he sees Judith and Brian starkers.

Judith betraying Brian at the end, well leaving him to hang is even sadder than the end of The Champ.

[Jockice]

I'm not!

[Blumf]

One of the little details in LoB, at the People's Front of Judea safe house when the Roman's bang on the door and the old guy (Matthias, apparently) is playing up an old person character:
"My legs are old and bent, my ears are grizzled... my nose is knackered"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXVN7QJ8m88

[Steven]

Yea, for it is written in the book of Cyril - that a man shall lose his friend's hammer and the children shall not know where they put the things that they did just the night before.

[yesitsme]

'Good shot!'

[SpiderChrist]

I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

[SpiderChrist]

    Reg: [reading prepared statement] "We, the People's Front of Judea, brackets, official, end brackets, do hereby convey our sincere fraternal and sisterly greetings to you, Brian, on this, the occasion of your martyrdom."
    Brian: What?
    Reg: "Your death will stand as a landmark in the continuing struggle to liberate the parent land from the hands of the Roman imperialist aggressors, excluding those concerned with drainage, medicine, roads, housing, education, viniculture and any other Romans contributing to the welfare of Jews of both sexes and hermaphrodites..."

[SpiderChrist]

[tag]I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief...[/tag]

[the]

The Meaning of Life of Brian

[Blumf]

"People aren't wearing enough hats"

[Gulftastic]

'Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!'
'What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me?.....All right, I am the Messiah!'
'He is! He is the Messiah!'
'Now...FUCK OFF!'

[EOLAN]

"I'm afraid, I am having a rather heavy period."
"And we have a train to catch."
"Oy yes, we have a train to catch, and I don't want to be bleeding all over the seats."

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

'Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!'
'What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me?.....All right, I am the Messiah!'
'He is! He is the Messiah!'
'Now...FUCK OFF!'

Quite possibly the funniest use of "fuck" in comedy history. Chapman's apoplectic, almost tearful delivery is perfect.

[Gulftastic]

Quite possibly the funniest use of "fuck" in comedy history. Chapman's apoplectic, almost tearful delivery is perfect.

Yes. It means he jointly holds the 'best 'fuck'' and the 'best 'Jesus Christ!'' in cinema history.

[McChesney Duntz]

I posit that the perfectly timed silence followed by Cleese's "How shall we fuck off, oh Lord?" is what really makes that scene for me.

Chapman's moments of exasperation throughout are just glorious. "Of course they've brought forth juniper berries! They're juniper bushes! What do you expect?!" will never not make me laugh.

[kalowski]

"I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry's and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, 'Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant.'"