The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978)

People are voting emotionally.

A Masterpiece!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I had the great pleasure to watch "All You Need Is Cash" last night at a Glasgow live music venue, where it was followed by a very enjoyable live performance by the band themselves, fronted by Neil Innes and still with John Halsey as the cuddly Barry (Ringo) Wom. Nice to not be the only Rutles fan around - in fact the real devotees were singing along and pre-empting dialogue like it was "The Rocky Horror Show". Cultdom indeed.Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this parody / homage to the Beatles as conceived by Python Eric Idle with the music provided by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's Neil Innes. Worked up from a brief sketch in an Idle BBC series, the story is I suppose fairly easily told, so well-known is the story of the most famous band ever. It's also fairly easy to spoof too and even if some of the jokes date back to when Sgt Pepper was a boy, there are plenty of laughs here.Idle gives himself the biggest part, not unnaturally, as the roving Whicker-esque reporter doing the narration and as Paul / Dirk in the band plus some other minor parts while there are effective cameos by a heavily disguised George Harrison, Paul Simon and Mick Jagger, the latter in particular in fine form. Blink and you might also miss fleeting appearances by most of the Saturday Night Live team of the time, not to mention Ronnie Wood and Michael Palin.The humour though wouldn't be strong enough to carry the show without Innes' quite superb pastiche music, with titles and arrangements instantly identifiable as Beatles take-offs but wholly enjoyable in their own right and in fact I believe the songs have dated far less than the comedy.It definitely helps your enjoyment if you're a longstanding Fab Four fan like me, but this sort of thing could very easily have gone wrong and it's a measure of the skill of Messrs Idle and in particular Innes that they get it so right. It certainly please pleased me.

Hilarious! This is the very word to describe this absolutely delightful Beatles-parody movie, with excellent roles played by all people involved, with Neil Innes, Ricky Fataar and Eric Idles being all-time great! Heavy British accents, funny hapless manners, excellent humor, clever wordplay, smashing gags, funny skits and deliciously delightful songs all form a heavy stew which is tasty, smells excellent, breaks mightily and provides a sheer 90-minute joy for watchers. This is a highly recommended movie for all Beatles fans who will immediately recognize all the familiar hints and innuendos. Allusions are very smart and the jokes are sometimes a bit too heavy but still zany and hefty. Even if you are not a Beatles fan, you can deeply enjoy Monty Python humor here, too. Fresh, breezy, fast, funny, often risky - this is a tremendously satisfying film for all people

The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978)This might be a necessary rite of passage for those who love the Beatles, or those who love "This is Spinal Tap" and other mockumentaries. Because this set the pattern, and a rather low bar of professionalism, for all that followed. It's not a great movie but it has great moments.Those moments include the extended interviews with Mick Jagger (and to a lesser extent Paul Simon). When each of these people first appear it's a thrill, when the reappear the surprise is gone and you realize the surprise is most of it. That the famous real stars were willing to get in on the gag is a great twist of fictional history.There are also other little snippets--not enough of them, but good ones, like Bill Murray being a crazy (typically) radio announcer, and an odd and overacted scene with John Belushi. Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner show up and so even does Bianca Jagger. These are quick and fun cameos, and the more of these the better.Central throughout is Eric Idle, the director and writer, and the one consistency in it all as the traveling reporting telling the documentary tale of the Pre-Fab Four. Some of the camera tricks are really funny, and the general dead pan delivery is good.All of this is great stuff and it's a lot, and if you could make a shorter mockumentary with the cream of the movie you'd have a pretty solid film. What drags it down is partly avoidable, party not: all the songs. We hear a good 15 or 20 Beatles-style homages or send-ups with these four mimics, and it's always interesting for ten seconds, hearing the slight twists to the famous riffs or melodies, seeing how they set the stage (with a little real footage now and then to make it even more real). But it wears thin after a minute, and sometimes the full three minutes is played out and it's just too long. And it happens a lot.It's a fun ride and if you can chill or chitchat during some of the drawn out parts you'll quickly be jerked into attention by some new twist.

Absolutely hilarious spoof of The Beatles. Eric Idle's finest 70 minutes and a spin off of his mid 70's TV show "Rutland Weekend Television" (Please BBC repeat this series). The songs are so clever - "I Must Be In Love' could've been an actual Beatles single it's that good. Neil Innes wrote the soundtrack which was deemed so good it was released as an album and 2 singles were released in the UK. The film follows so closely the actual events of the Beatles and George Harrison was so impressed with the script that he agreed to appear in the film. "Piggy in the Middle" (with absolutely spot on John Lennon-esq lyrics) perfectly recreates "Magical Mystery Tour" or in this case "Tragical History Tour" and the Yellow Submarine cartoon section looks so damn good that it will have you looking out for it next time you watch that film. "Love Life" is a perfect recreation of the television event of 1967 and by this point Neil Innes looks and sounds exactly like John Lennon. Everything is covered here, Lennons infamous "Bigger than Jesus" quote and it even mocks Apple (a pealed banana.) My favourite bit is Eric Idle tracing the musical roots of the Rutles, talking to 'Blind Lemon Pie' and finding out he should be talking to the bloke next door is one of the funniest few minutes of film I've seen - especially when he goes round there... "He's lying, he's always lying. Last week he said he invented the Everly Brothers." It's pant-wettingly funny. Regarded as a cult item now this is right up there with Spinal Tap but this is so much funnier, if you love the Beatles (who doesn't?) then you need to see this, one of the cleverest and most affectionate spoofs ever made. Buy the album too - for a parody the songs are superb.