What movie? Later on people seem to be talking about Holy Grail later on, but no movie has been mentioned at this point.
I didn’t think the Holy Grail was regarded as one of the best films ever. I thought The Life of Brian was consistently voted as best comedy of all time. It’s a much more solid movie.
If you want general python, the movie “And now for something completely different” is pretty representative of them.
You’re no fun anymore.
“It’s wafer-thin.”
I mostly agree with the OP.
Monty Python is good, but I’ve never quite seen the “OMG” in it.
I think this nails it. Especially since, in their most successful material, there is a character who seems normal, to draw the audience in to the absurd universe.
Perhaps that’s why I never cared for much of the animation. It was an absurd universe, but nobody was around to react to it, even if their reaction turned out to go way beyond logic.
One of the bits of animation that worked for me was in Life of Brian. Brian wants to put the graffito “Romans Go Home” on the citadel, the centurion catches him, and then absurdly treats him the way a Latin school master treats a pupil. “But this is motion towards, isn’t it?” Then Brian writes it a hundred times, there is the sudden realization of the absurdity of the situation, Brian flees and is caught up by the desu ex machina of the flying saucer. And Brian recognizes that this is still an absurd universe, and drops out of it, back to his “normal” world. Brian the character is in the flying saucer, but not of the flying saucer.
Another bit that works is where God gives the knights of the Round Table the mission to seek the Holy Grail. Not only because God looks like a medieval painting of Himself, but because of the quick cuts between the knights (“Good idea, oh Lord!”) and God (“OF COURSE IT’S A GOOD IDEA!”). Because, obviously, it’s God - His ideas are going to be good. And the knights should have realized that - to think otherwise is absurd.
The ending to Holy Grail worked, but wasn’t IMO very creative, But by that time, my sense of reality was so beat up that it fit, more or less.
But the tone was set for me by the very first sketch of MP I saw, Harold the Clever Sheep. The outsider, asking a perfectly reasonable question about why the sheep are up in trees, to receive the long, elaborate answer that it’s all Harold’s fault for trying to teach the sheep to fly. Because, according to the rules of that universe, it makes sense. Nobody wants to stand around a paddock for a couple of months, and be et.
But it continues, because of the immense commercial possibilities, should he succeed. Which transitions seamlessly into a discussion of those advantages. In French. And then you are drawn into a universe with absurd, but definite, rules, and those rules will be made clear, more or less. Once you grant that somebody would go to a clinic for an argument, it makes sense that I cannot argue unless you pay.
And accepting those rules made it all work. Not only did Kemal Ataturk have an entire menagerie, all called Abdul, people seeking a cat license would have the reference work proving it immediately to hand. And having produced it, got an immediate apology.
It didn’t always work - I didn’t care for that nice Mr. Hilter, nor Mr. Neutron, despite his ability to destroy whole galaxies with his wrist. But when it worked, it worked.
Regards,
Shodan
makes his escape thru Soft Toys
What really gets me giggling is God’s peevishness that Arthur and the others don’t understand that He’s *always *going to have good ideas.
That, and the fact that Terry Gilliam used a picture of this guy for God’s face: W. G. Grace - Wikipedia
Life of Brian still stands up - because it had a point to it that’s still relevant today - but much of the rest of the Python output is very, very dated. Comedy doesn’t often age well.
People either like funny-clever songs or they don’t. Personally the entire genre leaves me cold and I don’t get Python (though Fawlty Towers rules). I also don’t get Tom Lehrer, Frank Zappa (as a lyricist - he’s a good songwriter), Weird Al Yankovic, etc etc. But what can I say, some people live for that stuff.
Come on, guys, the OP simply expressed that Monty Python’s absurdist humor isn’t his (her?) cup of tea. He didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition… 
My friend, I am always ready for and expecting the Spanish Inquisition to attack while I’m posting something. It is when I am at my most vulnerable.
Is this the right room for an argument?
I’ll allow it but keep it civil. Otherwise, this chat might get moved to the Pit and I don’t know how THAT will turn out.
Let’s not overlook the great dichotomy within MP skits – Eric Idle vs. John Cleese. Two utterly different kinds of humor.
I can’t stand Idle, or his comedy (I mean, Spam is not nearly as inherently funny as he seems to think). Cleese, on the other hand, is a genius, and fully realized his comic genius with Fawlty Towers.
Yes, that’s the room for Abuse. Your kind makes me puke! :mad:
That’s a problem with off-the-wall comedy in general. The Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business ends with Groucho looking for a needle in a haystack, for an even more WTF?! ending.
As one who regards off-the-wall comedy as true comedy, and comedies where you actually care about how the plot is resolved as drama/comedy or romance/comedy or some other form of (half something else)/(half comedy), I just take it for granted that even the best comedies are going to have an artificial ending. Airplane! probably finesses this problem about as well as it can be done.
FWIW, I consider MP&HG to be the best comedy ever. Yes, of course it’s a bunch of individual vignettes strung together, but almost all of them are tremendously funny, at least AFAIAC.
I’ve told you once.
Not my experience. I first saw MP&HG when it first came out, in early summer of 1975. It was a lightly attended weekday matinee, and my only previous Python experience had been And Now For Something Completely Different, which I’d seen a month or two earlier.
I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.
(Still do. YouTubed through it with the Firebug just a few years back, skipping the Castle Anthrax scene due to his tender age, but otherwise watching beginning to end. Still just as funny. The kid loved it too.)
No, you didn’t.
I might have felt the same way if my “only” experience had been another full-length feature film filled with some of the best bits of the TV show. “Military Fairies,” f’rinstance.
Cleese a couple years ago slammed the TV show as not being funny. Shortly after that we re-watched the entire run.
Yeah, sometimes it just fails. There’s even a few episodes that just don’t work at all.
But on the other hand there is still a decent amount of really great stuff.
I think some people see the poor stuff and think the whole show is bad. Others see the good stuff and see the whole show as great.
And I never got the love for Fawlty Towers. It is boring, simplistic, predictable old-school British comedy. (And racist too boot.) MPFC was so novel in so many ways and to see a member go back to the old hack way of comedy is sad.