I didn’t see it on release but I remember thinking the ending was lame back in the VHS era when I did first see it. But that was pre-internet so the only people around to hear me complain were a few friends in a basement.
People aren’t complaining about it now, they’re criticizing it just like when it first came out. The gags in the credits served to revive the audience that stayed for them. The ending was not un-Python like at all, except for being so weakly done in an otherwise strong movie. It wouldn’t have taken much more to make that ending significantly funny and a suitable way to end the movie.
Still, it’s a minor glitch in an otherwise great movie.
The ending is the equivalent of Indiana Jones pulling out a pistol when you’re expecting him to fight the guy with the sword. It completely subverts our expectations of what is going to happen.
It’s also reminiscent of a lot of Roald Dahl stories (e.g., “Poison,” “Galloping Foxley,” “Neck”).
Another good example in my book. IMO Life of Brian is a better movie overall than Holy Grail, but the “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” bit at the end is one of the weakest gags in the movie. It’s funny at first but just goes on and on, and then the movie’s over.
That movie didn’t end when he shot the guy. In Holy Grail it is as I alluded to earlier, no different than just cutting to black at that point.
A friend of mine saw MP&tHG recently and John Cleese was there to talk and answer questions after the screening. According to my friend, the first thing he said was “sorry about that ending”.
The thing is, Python weren’t known for their punchlines. The Parrot Sketch isn’t a classic because of how it ends. Something about their style seems to set up situations that are funny precisely because they can’t be resolved. I’ve heard that they considered an ending where Arthur and his knights found the Holy Grail in the grail department at Harrod’s. Even that would be an anti-climax.
I can only think of a few great endings in the Python oeuvre. Life of Brian is one of them.
That I definitely don’t agree with. In fact, I’d argue that Life of Brian is the only work of any kind that Monty Python nailed the landing on. Not knowing how to end a sketch (And now for something completely different), movie (All right, sonny. That’s enough. Just pack that in.), concert (PISS OFF!), whatever is one of the group’s endearing short comings
I don’t think many people are arguing that it failed to subvert expectations. Just disagreement on whether or not it was funny or effective. People still talk about Indy and his pistol because the subversion resulted in something that was funny and cool. I couldn’t say the same about the ending.
It’s time for my biennial rant about Contact, isn’t it? Since I talk about both film and book, I put this in spoilers.
It’s been a while since I was able to bring up the betrayal which was…
Contact
… so here I go again.
The novel was thematically about one womans search for evidence of God’s existence.
As in the movie, they get the transmissions, she goes on her voyage (6 others are with her in the book, but don’t exist in the movie. No big deal, ya’ gotta cut a LOT with only 2 hours to tell the tale.) She comes back, subjective time on Earth is as shown in the novel, other than a bunch of static on her recording, there is no evidence the voyage even happens.
CUE END OF NOVEL: So there’s a govt inquest, the only evidence is the static, Ellie takes her lumps and, when done, programs her computer to figure out Pi to the n’th degree because her “father” said that’s where the evidence will be.
And she finds it, the scientific or mathematical evidence of a creator she had spent her whole life searching for. finis.
Really, the sort of ending one would expect from Sagan, a noted agnostic (if not atheist, but this isn’t the thread to quibble).
CUE END OF MOVIE: Govt inquest. Ellie bombarded by questions from Kitz, doesn’t have answers, finally comes up with a retort worthy of a 7th-grader on a message board “You have to take me on faith”. She walks out to an adoring audience, signs and all, “We believe you”, while Angela Basset reveals the not-so-shocking news that’s there is static on the tape which corresponds to the amount of time Ellie says she spent on the journey. FADE TO BLACK.
THE BETRAYAL: The book was about what it would take for a scientist to believe in a creator of the universe. Ellies father-alien said “we have found evidence of builders, here is how to find that same evidence.” Ellie goes out and finds it, but the book ends prior to her releasing it.
The movie was apparently about what it would take for a congressional enquiry to not charge you with crimes if you concocted some scheme which cost the governments billion$. The “evidence of God” issue… the central theme to the novel… was jettisoned for a cutesie line about “Well, I guess YOU have to take ME on faith, hyuck-hyuck”, with the adoring… and ignorant… masses falling behind Ellie as if she is a modern day Jesus.
So, the ending was changed. The character was changed. The theme, the central message of the novel, was not only ignored, it was, in fact, the opposite of Sagan’s intentions .
So Contact gets my vote here. It was going gangbusters until the final 20.
1971’s Duel, Steven Spielberg’s debut film.
A trucker seems to have a personal vendetta against some guy just trying to get home. Goes out of his way to harass, and them outright harm and kill this guy.
Does a fair amount of collateral damage along the way to third parties as well.
At then end, the trucker seems willing to kill himself in order to get this guy, and does manage to kill himself, but the guy outmaneuvers him and survives.
We never find out who the trucker was, what his motivation was, or anything. All the suspense and buildup and then just… the end.
Still a great movie to watch right before a long road trip though. 
ETA: Added spoiler
JohnT here is the thing that has always bothered me about the ending to Contact the book. As you say:
So, IIRC from having read the book 25+ years ago:
She is printing out the results of her Pi calculation, and I forget how many pages and pages into it, right in the middle of the page, is a perfect circle.
But to have a circle print out that way, wouldn’t it be dependent on how many characters per line and lines per page you are printing? Otherwise the characters forming the circle on the page are not going to arrange themselves correctly.
And even though I’m talking about the book not the movie, I still think it fits the thread because it happens on the very last page, and makes no sense.
In the novel, Sagan writes that the anomaly is most stark in Base-11 arithmetic and that the program created the raster which showed the circle. So, a bit of handwaving, but he did explain this.
So, basically the bible code.
If you can futz around with the base and the alignment, you can find any patterns you are looking for.
Lol, I never made that connection, but yes.
Pump Up The Volume. Christian Slater’s character is arrested, we don’t see any reactions from the characters - including his parents - when they finally see who’s the voice behind the radio show. It goes to black and over the credits you hear all these other teens starting up their own radio shows.
Where’s the damned pay off? Nowhere.
Ah, OK. Like I said, it’s been ages since I read the book, so I was sure my memory was fuzzy on the details.
I totally love from beginning to end the movie, “RED”, with Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Dreyfuss. It was totally worthy of its star-studded cast!
It seems that this thread is about movies you stopped liking at the end or you didn’t like the ending.
I do agree with you about the movie. Very enjoyable.
Oops! My bad.
The title isn’t clear. Initially I thought the same thing you did. And then starting to read the thread I wondered why people liked the awful endings to movies they mentioned.