Eric Idle owes me $11 (or, The Rutles 2 sucked)

Cafe Society
1

Back in 1978, Eric Idle and Neil Innes (of Bonzo Dog Band fame) created The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a brilliant mockumentary skewering the Beatles. It was quite hilarious and the songs were brilliant. So well written were some of the songs, that one or two actually ended up on some Beatles’ bootleg recordings in the 80’s.

Well, Mr. Idle, you should have stopped right there. Instead you decided to dig up the corpse of this masterpiece and anally violate it by releasing The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch.

Did you give us anything new about the Pre-fab Four? Nope.

All you did was record (on video, no less) “new” host segments were were pretty much rehashes of the ones you did in 1978 interspersed with clips from the original. You added a few new interviews (shame on you, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, David Bowie, Conan O’Brien, and Jewel) that basically parroted the comments made in the original. At least Billy Connelly was mean (in a scripted way, of course).

And why the f*ck did you think it would be funny for Jimmy “No Trick Pony” Fallon to appear as your long lost son trying to imitate your presenter character?

Mr. Idle, you shame us all by this fetid pile of crap.

I’ll be expecting you to pop an $11 cheque in the post post haste.

Don’t ever do this again.

2

Thanks for the consumer report. Not all Python merchandise is worth having.

Then again, he does call himself a “greedy bastard”.

Eric Idle’s recent U.S. comedy revue tour was called the “Greedy Bastard Tour”. FWIW, his memoir of that experience is a very good read – observant, frank, funny, and surprisingly poignant.

3

So, basically, you’re asking him to buy you lunch?

4

I had the feeling this one was going to be a disappointment. Do I infer correctly that this purported sequel doesn’t even include any new Neil Innes songs???

5

That and he should be forced to watch Manos (un-MSTied) for pennance.

6

There’s a few snippets from the almost-as-disappointing Archaeology CD that came out in 1996.

There is one bit of new video: Ron Nasty’s “appearance” on Saturday Night Live, but it’s so short that is really isn’t worth mentioning.

7

Hmm. I did find Archaeology disappointing at first, but when I came back to it a few years later, it really started to grow on me. Now I think it’s splendid. It doesn’t sound like this new DVD has a similar potential, though.

8

Definitely not. Idle seems to be doing a parody of himself.

Not funny.