And Now for Something Completely Different (1972)

A Major Disappointment

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

In the Monty Python universe anything goes, space is irrelevant, and the filmmaking process itself becomes part of the comedy. It's by default a hit-or-miss affair, but the hits far outnumber the misses. There are many classic bits (the marriage counselor, the dead parrot, the lumberjack song, the falling bodies, etc. etc.), as nearly every British (and a few non-British) stereotype is satirized. Some jokes are stretched too long, but there is so much freedom, invention (not to forget Terry Gilliam's animated interludes) and anarchy on display that it would seem petty to complain. *** out of 4.

It's an adjustment seeing classic bits of television comedy being repurposed for the cinema. The first-ever film by TV's Monty Python troupe offers an enjoyable, if rather restrained, showcase of reshot series excerpts.What "And Now For Something Completely Different" lacks in originality, it makes up for in zaniness and wit. Meet a group of elderly ladies who terrorize city streets: "We like pulling the heads off sheep...and tea cakes."Thrill to a fight to the death for the title "Upper-Class Twit of the Year:" "He doesn't know when he's beaten...He doesn't know when he's winning, either. He has no sort of sensory apparatus known to man."Learn why British film directors don't like being called "Eddie Baby," "Angel Drawers," or "Frank," even if President Nixon has a hedgehog by that name.It's also a chance to see the stars of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" with longer hair and shaggier sideburns, except for Terry Gilliam who makes just a couple of token appearances while sticking to animation. John Cleese steals much of the show with his delicious overacting, yet Eric Idle makes the strongest impression as everything from a randy marriage counselor to one of Hell's Grannies. Meanwhile, Terry Jones squints, Michael Palin smirks, and Graham Chapman disapproves of everything. None are as sensational as they would become, but all make impressions.For all that it has going for it, "And Now" connects only about half the time. Gilliam's animation seems slower and more ponderous here than it did on television, and the one-joke nature of his cartoons gets exposed in a way they didn't as television interstitials. A kind of pokiness cuts into the live-action material as well, like bits involving mice that squeal on key when hit with a hammer and men with tape recorders up their noses. Each of these may be only a minute or so, but they feel much longer.Several of Python's best-loved sketches don't appear here, like the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Crunchy Frog. The best-known sketch that does appear, the Dead Parrot, is actually a little dead itself for some reason. Director Ian MacNaughton was Python's usual director for television, and if anything shoots things in an even flatter manner here than he did for the BBC. Perhaps it's because television was Python's medium, for the way it offered a kind of subversive platform for their entertainments.Other sketches do shine. The Funniest Joke in the World is a great laugh unless you're German, in which case view with caution. Even better is the Milkman sketch, which demonstrates the pitfall of falling for the wrong woman.Overall, "And Now" makes for a fine Python primer, a starter course as another reviewer suggests. It's not a landmark film, or even that major a milestone by Python standards, but it delivers some laughs along with a sense of what these guys were about.

'And Now for Something Completely Different' is basically just a large episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus but this is certainly not a bad thing. Despite the film's lack of plot and confusing format it is still really funny. Of course, because there are so many sketches then there will be some that you won't like, but there will be ones that you will love (the mountaineering sketch is my personal favourite). This can mean that people may grow tired of the film before it ends and - as is always the case with Monty Python - some people will absolutely love it and some people will hate it. Terry Gilliam's animation sequences are also really funny and bizarre. All of the cast perform really well here and have all got their personal best sketch performances in here i.e. Eric Idle's 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink' sketch. This is the first of Monty Python's films and it is not their best but it is still really funny. If you are a fan of Monty Python then you will love this film.

*** MAJOR SPOILER ALERT *** A man walks into the office of a guidance counselor, and takes a seat. The counselor advises the man that he has looked over his aptitude tests and has concluded that the best position suited to him would be as an accountant. "But I am an accountant," the man says, "I have been one for the past 20 years. I want something exciting that will let me live." He reports that his current job is desperately dull and boring, to which the counselor informs him that his tests reveal that he is dull and boring. The job he wants: lion tamer. This despite the fact he has no training and seems to have mistaken lions for aardvarks. He does have a proper hat though. The counselor informs us that "This is what accountancy does to people." That's the grand anarchic spirit of Monty Python. Grab a normal scenario and whip it into something so over-exaggerated and silly that we almost have to laugh at the concept. I think the British are experts at this. There's a drollery to their delivery that allows a scene like that to work. Week after week, this was what made the best parts of The Monty Python troup's TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" work. They adopted a sort-of shotgun approach to their sketches, firing every idea at us no matter how ridiculous and hoping that one of them would make us laugh.The laugh ratio on the show was about 40%. Some sketched worked but many did not. Their first feature film And Now for Something Completely Different culls their best sketches into a kind of "Best of" collection. These sketches are not just replays from the show, but actually reenactments, on film without an audience. The laugh ratio in the film is about 70/30. Many of their ideas work if you're willing to stretch your imagination.The troup, which is comprised of six players - Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin - work exhaustively throughout this film to play more than 100 different characters, are so willing to make us laugh that they will come up with nearly anything. That would explain an opening scene featuring a man who claims to have a tape recorder up his nose. He presses one nostril and the tape plays "La Marseillaise". He presses the other nostril and he can rewind the tape. Even stranger is the follow-up act featuring the man's brother who suffers from the same affliction, this time the song plays in stereo. Far from classic comedy, but you get the idea.My favorite is a sketch called "Hell's Grannies", which involves a news report dealing with a roving gang of little old ladies who beat young men over the head with their pocket books. We see them in their flowered hats, swinging their purses and roaring around on their motorcycles while wrapped in shawls. One nervous citizen in a leather jacket and a Jolly Roger helmet informs us that "It's not even safe to go out to the shops anymore." The news reporter lets us know that their domain is "a world in which the surgical stocking is king". Only slightly worse are a roving gang of baby snatchers, grown men in diapers who snatch adults from in front of grocery stores.One of the best creative touches in the film is the way in which the sketches are linked together. One sketch leads into the next in a way this oddly fitting. For example the scene with the accountant ends with a fairy waving his magic wand and giving the accountant something more exciting. That makes him the host of the game show that is the next sketch. It is called "Blackmail" a sadistic game show in which privately obtained films of adultery are shown, and the person on the film has to call in with a cash offer so the show will stop running the film.All of this is very subjective and no one laughs at exactly the same thing. That's pretty much what makes Monty Python work. Either you are in on the joke or you're looking for laughter elsewhere. Either the sight of an armed bank robber committing his crime only the discover that he has walked into a lingerie shop is funny to you or it isn't. For me, I laughed most of the time, the rest I was left scratching my head. Maybe that was the point.