Like, wow.
Behold the damage caused by ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’.
Yes, it was brilliant, and inspired a lot of not-quite-as-brilliant-but-still-really-good comedy.
But THIS…THIS is what happens when someone (Terry Jones) is given complete artistic license to make a vanity project movie based on his own book SOLELY because he was a member of Python, albeit the least talented member.
I’m sure the executives watched this before agreeing to release it, just like they read the script before agreeing to fund it. But when they found both of them dull and almost completely without humor, they just shrugged and said “Well, that’s what the critics said about Python…we don’t get it, but it MUST be funny…let’s give it a go.”
Well, this is like a mediocre Jones/Palin sketch, only worse because it’s got no Palin, stretched out to movie-length with no increase in the volume of laughs along with the volume of material. The opening scene is the only thing I remembered from the first time I watched this, and that’s because it’s the only scene with “Python-esque” qualities, in the good sense(intelligent, well-written, funny, and in terrible taste).
The rest is, as cameo-appearance-for-old-time’s-sake John Cleese might describe it, “Irrepressibly drab and awful.”
Grade: F