Monty Python's 'Meaning of Life' (DVD)

As it says on the cover of this dvd, 'It took God six days to create the Heavens and the earth...and Monty Python ninety minutes to screw it up'. There is nothing so sacred that this team don't bring it down to the lowest common denominator. It's far out, crazy, irreverent and fun unless you are particularly religious and may be offended by some of the references to the Roman Catholic faith, and the miracle of birth. It isn't one single film with a continuous story but more like a collection of Python skits all clipped together. In fact there are times when it's hard to tell how how you got to where you are in film, but that is the nature of the ...  Read the complete review

Monty Python’s fourth and final feature film was greeted with a fair degree of criticism by the media and cinemagoers, some finding it unnecessarily gratuitous at the expense of the humour and others feeling disappointed by the return to a sketch-based style following their 1979 hugely popular comedy epic ‘Life of Brian.’ While the Meaning of Life clearly doesn’t succeed as a motion picture in the way that ‘Life of Brian’ and ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ did, it also carries with it a very relaxed attitude that suggests the Pythons knew they had made their classics and now wanted to return to more familiar territory for a final cinematic fling: this is still a far ...  Read the complete review

You can imagine the scene, the Monty Python boys are meeting, probably in Michael Palin's house ( I hear his wife makes great sausage rolls) to discuss ideas for their new, and final, movie. Having tackled organised religion in "The Life of Brian" and outraged the Church, they have to decide who to tackle, and thus offend, this time. Perhaps after rejecting several ideas, a voice from the back of the room, probably John Cleese returned from the toilet, the effect of urine on porcelain being a well known inspirational aid, shouts. "I've got it guys! Lets do a movie that offends everybody!" And bloody hell ,they did it. ...  Read the complete review

Monty Python are one of the classic comedy teams in this country's history. In the days of their TV series they brought ground-breaking humour, quickly gathering a cult following due to their status as one of the funniest shows of the time. Irreverent, witty, sometimes silly, but very, very funny. Even today their sketches are still quoted parrot-fashion up and down the country, to the delight of other fans and the bemusement of others :) "The Meaning Of Life" was the last film produced by the Monty Python team. Many fans prefer the first two films, and if you ask people which of the three was their favourite, this is ...  Read the complete review

For me this is the worst of the three films which the Monty Python team did, that is if I am judging it as a film in the strictest sense of the word. . It really is more of a selection of sketches which have been loosely linked together as a journey through life. Some of the sketches are very good and very funny whilst others are a bit cringe worthy and about as funny as a wet weekend camping. This sketch format really makes it a very odd type of 'film' and the 'intermission' bit where the game of 'find the fish' is played is so ridiculous it's unbelievable. This is perhaps part of the film that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Sometimes I ...  Read the complete review