Post by ronnierocketago on Mar 20, 2010 8:45:55 GMT
MONTY PYTHON'S AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (1971) - ***
Monty Python are the Beatles of comedy. Despite their legendary FLYING CIRCUS television program having a relatively short lifespan (only 45 episodes in 5 years), they're still as fresh and relevant now as they were back then. They conquered Britain (later America through PBS reruns)with their trademark anarchic nonsense, simultaneously heady and low-brow. A perennial powerfully everlasting fuck you at the creatively disabling formula.
They didn't push the envelope, they shredded the mother fucker, burned it, and then pissed on it for good measure. After the show, the gang (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman) would then subsequently reform every few years reform to make a movie, three terrific comedies in all. Then unfortunately Python died when Chapman died. See my Beatles analogy wasn't just nerd hypebole. And they're still damn deeply missed by all.
Subsequent generations of comedians on both sides of the pond were deeply influenced. Mention to them sketches like the Dead Parrot or Upper-Class Twit of the Year or Ministry of Silly Walks, they'll recreate and recite them by heart and with a schoolboy giggle. You see Python's bastard children in SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, THE SIMPSONS, Conan O'Brien, LITTLE BRITAIN, LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, Jon Stewart, etc. And just imagine the modern western comedy if those assholes at the BBC had went ahead with their bonehead plan in the early 1970s to erase all the FLYING CIRCUS tapes. Gone forever like those early DOCTOR WHO seasons or the Moon landing. See stupidity is global. Hell Python even gave us the e-mail terminology "Spam."
Back to the Beatles metaphoralogy, I suppose AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT is there MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, a well-intentioned failure that those guys rather wish was forgotten, dropped behind someone's couch. Well actually that's not apt. As disjointed and unbeable as MAGICAL could be, at least we got some good Beatles tunes out of that project like Lennon's classic psychedelic drug-fueled riddle "I Am The Walrus." What good comes from AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?
It's not that SOMETHING is a bad movie. No not at all, in fact it's a rather competent sketch comedy. Not as good as HOLY GRAIL or LIFE OF BRIAN or shit even the derided MEANING OF LIFE, but still watchable and even entertaining. To a point. You get of course Gilliam's fucking surreal as hell pop art collage animation, the smartass deranged juvenile delinquent teenage older sibling of YELLOW SUBMARINE. I think for some this was always the CIRCUS highlight. And then obviously you have the cliche about the sincere great joy in watching these tight-knit guys perform together with dynamite chemistry, some having performed together for years pre-CIRCUS, and all their Python gags penned in mind of who would execute them. All that.
On youtube you can find that Q&A the surviving Pythons conducted for that rather detailed and informative "official" documentary ALMOST THE TRUTH: THE LAWYER'S CUT, and they still have the wit by busting each other's balls in a half-mean spirited/half-cheeky inside joke fashion. Cleese is broke from his divorce, Idle is whoring out the Python brand name and regurgitating creatively for the easy payday, Gilliam is a pretentious dick director, etc. Though I'm certain the nasty insults at Idle for SPAMALOT might be genuine.
The problem is this: If you've seen the TV series, you have no reason to watch this. None what so ever. Someone at Playboy in the states saw some FLYING CIRCUS and offered to fund their Yankee debut with a movie. The Pythons wanted to break into America, so they agreed. Except this was after the 1st CIRCUS series, they're about to start on series 2 and didn't exactly have the time to write up new material. Thus they decided to reshoot sketches from series 1 (and some later to appear in series 2), since hey it would be new to those dumb Americans. For $200,000 and shot at an abandoned dairy instead of an expensive studio, they milked all they could from the back catalogue. Get it? Because milk is dairy.
There is something definately lacking from these sketches, including Dead Parrot, Upper Class Twit, Wink Wink Nudge Nudge, Blackmail, Hell's Grannies, etc. The actors are there, the material was proven already to be good...but it's eating a Hot Pocket that wasn't nuked enough. Sure the stupid box said to cook at least 6 minutes and you hate a burnt Pocket, but damn after 6 its still hard and tastes like a disgustingly dry rock that someone shat on. SOMETHING feels slightly undercooked. Funny, but not funny.
On second thought, maybe the trouble isn't the material being remade. In their live concert captured in LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL...they performed alot of the same classic sketches, and it's fucking hilarious. Except unlike SOMETHING, HOLLYWOOD had an audience. They knew these jokes already, some too well, yet they laughed laughed laughed to the dead of night. And the cast were like rock stars, wanting to get that audience pop and knowing which buttons to push to get it. I'm sure a Python virgin would get some giggles out of HOLLYWOOD. Maybe not as much from SOMETHING. Alot of FLYING CIRCUS was shot for an audience, and maybe that interaction between the players and the mob crowd is why the SOMETHING performances are a tad off. They lack that killer rabbit edge.
I think one thing I would like to make mention of is Carol Cleveland. She never gets much credit or attention, or even top billing on TV or at the movies. Yet she was quite important as the sole woman to perform with that troupe, she did all the non-drag women parts. Underrated in her understated humor, playing as the sexpot victim or hunter or whatever female parts that didn't need guys in drag. Would Castle Anthrax in HOLY GRAIL be as funny? I doubt it. "We need a spanking!"[/i] Plus I as a man must say that she has quite a wonderful clevage. Not breats, but clevage. Two completely different artforms.
SOMETHING was a miscalculated misfire. In the U.S. it got polite positive reviews, but the distribution was scattershot to just college campuses and major cities, and well for 1971 America it was perhaps just too soon, too crazy, too ahead of its time. Kinda like how PAUL'S BOUTIQUE was in 1989. So SOMETHING did jackshit in the states, and Playboy had to recoup the budget by a British release. That's right, imagine those limey suckers realizing too late that they paid for something they watched earlier on the telly for free.
Sounds almost like a Python sketch, eh? *RRA gets Squashed by Foot*