Films that should have ended earlier

[neveragain]

I remember reading a suggestion from one of the Monty Python team that "The Meaning of Life" should have ended with the explosion of Mr Creosote (with the French waiter's monologue through the credits), on the grounds that everything after that had to be an anticlimax.

More or less, yeah. The editor Julian Doyle's idea was to cut and paste the Cleaner's Poem/French Waiter bit from its position to the end of the film (with, as you say, the credits and closing with Idle telling us to fuck off) because it would remind people of the best bit of the film, as well as generally being a better ending. Quite right too. I've always thought we spend too long in Creosote's restaurant in one go.