Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

Doesn't hold up as well as some of Monty Python's other work, but there's enough classic moments in here to make it worthwhile watching.

_Final rating:★★★ - I liked it. Would personally recommend you give it a go._

**I expected much more: this film is a shadow of what it should have been.**

I think it's redundant to say what everyone already knows: the Monty Python represents the pinnacle of British humor, and if each of those comedians is excellent alone, seeing them together is always an added bonus. This film, however, is a late work by the group, when each of them was starting to have a solo career and the group's notoriety was consolidated. There are incredible partnerships in the artistic world, and if we think about it, we will think of huge music bands, television series or troupes of actors that worked incredibly well and were successful for a certain time. The issue is that many of them did not know how to harmonize a joint existence with the growing commitments of individual agendas. And I think that's what happened with Python, and that helped complicate this project.

The film makes us laugh, it has some good moments, but it is a shadow if we try to compare it to “The Holy Grail”, for example. That's the crux of the matter: it's not bad, but it should have been much better, considering the talent of those involved! For me, a good part of the problem comes from the fact that it is a succession of humorous sketches with almost no obvious correlation between them. We can admit that in a TV comedy show, it is done routinely, and it works very well. In a film, greater cohesion, unity and homogeneity are expected. It's not an unbreakable rule, but it was an expectation I had.

Another problem with this film is the quality of the humor. We already know that the humor has more puerile moments and others that are frankly acidic, but the film resorts too much to easy laughter and simplistic and unrefined humor: a man who is condemned to death and chooses to fall off a cliff after being chased by naked women; an enormously obese man who, in a fancy restaurant, vomits everything around him and eats a regimental dose of food; a sex education class for totally naive boys (something impossible to believe, even considering the time when the film was made) and with the right to practical and very visual exemplification of the act in the classroom... what's the funny in all this?

As I said, the movie has some good moments. I loved the delivery room sketch, I think it's an absolutely delicious sarcasm and that it still works as a critique of the general state of public health services. I also liked Crimson Insurance, which is nothing more than a gigantic parody of Errol Flynn's piracy films, especially “Sea Hawk”, but which has a sympathetic touch and a critique of globalization and unbridled capitalism. Much less pleasant, but equally hilarious, was the huge musical sketch of Irish Catholics, stuffed to the bone with political incorrectness and with very accurate stings to the rejection discourse that the Catholic Church was maintaining with regard to contraceptive methods.

Well, I suppose if anyone was ever going to be able to get to grips with the meaning of life, it was going to be the “Monty Python” lads but for me their brand of comedy never really worked. This starts with it’s equivalent of a B-reel: a bunch of geriatric insurance processors who react with unexpected violence when one of their number is fired. Next thing their building is a weapon of war wreaking havoc on the glittering world of a-personal commercialism! It’s quite entertaining how these folks intermingle “Spartacus” into the plot as they cannibalise everything from the ceiling fan to the filing cabinet to arm themselves. Thence to the main feature - and that starts with a stinging swing at the monetisation of life, right from the process of birth followed by a sarcastic critique on the attitudes to family planning of Roman Catholics with their sacred sperm! That sticky wicket starts us off through a cycle of education and onto the thing man does best: make war. This is maybe the funniest part as they have to cart around an officer who has a bit of a sore leg! Thereafter it begins to strain a little and descends too much into the realms of the vulgar. Perhaps songs about the penis raised a titter in the 1960s but in 1983 they are less potent, as is the sight of a large gent over-indulging then spewing all over the place. Finally, the man with the scythe turns up to herald the final chapter and convey everyone to a perpetual existence of tinsel and mince pies. It has it’s moments and at times it successfully uses exaggerated scenarios to provide quite a witty observation on just how mundanity governs pretty much all we do from cradle to grave, but it misses more than it hits for me. There’s no doubt it’s innovative and the assessment of the human condition quite apt, but the songs really do border on the puerile and for me it just all ran out of puff.

## **Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983) Review: A Glorious, Unflinching 10/10 Finale**

If *Holy Grail* was a medieval romp and *Life of Brian* a pointed satire, then *The Meaning of Life* is Monty Python's grand, chaotic, and philosophically unhinged thesis statement. It is their most ambitious, most visually stunning, and most brazenly offensive film — a series of sketches loosely tied to the seven ages of man that asks the biggest question of all and answers it with a song-and-dance number, a torrent of vomit, and a talking fish. It is, in short, a perfect 10/10 and the most Python-esque film they ever made.

### The Main Feature: From Birth to Death and Everything Absurd

The film is a return to their sketch-show roots, but with a Hollywood-sized budget and a directorial confidence from Terry Jones that allows each segment to be a self-contained masterpiece of style and substance. The tone swings wildly from musical extravaganza to bleak existential horror, often within the same scene, and it is this fearless commitment to the bit that makes it so brilliant.

**Highlights of a Universe of Genius:**

* **The Miracle of Birth (and the Machine that Goes 'Ping!'):** The film opens with one of its most legendary sketches. In a sterile, futuristic hospital, a husband is ushered into a delivery room that resembles a factory floor. The doctors are more concerned with the hospital's expensive, state-of-the-art machine that goes "Ping!"—the only machine whose purpose is to be turned on to signify how well-equipped the hospital is — than with the actual mother giving birth. When the baby is finally born and the father asks, "Is it a boy or a girl?", the doctor's dismissive, politically ahead-of-its-time reply; "I think it's a little soon to start imposing gender roles on it, don't you?" — is a sublime piece of satire that lampoons both cold medical bureaucracy and emerging social trends in one flawless line.

* **The Universe in a Fish Tank:** The "Live Organ Transplants" sketch, where a platoon of doctors invade a man's home to repossess his liver, is a masterpiece of escalating horror-comedy. The "Middle of the Film" segment, where a grotesquely obese Mr. Creosote is persuaded to eat "one last wafer-thin mint," is a Rabelaisian spectacle of excess. And the film's philosophical core, "The Galaxy Song," is one of Eric Idle's most beautiful and humbling compositions, reminding us of our tiny, insignificant place in a vast cosmos—set to a cheerful calypso tune.

### The Short Before the Feature: *The Crimson Permanent Assurance*

Attached to the beginning of the film is what is essentially a 15-minute Python movie in its own right: **"The Crimson Permanent Assurance."** Directed by Terry Gilliam, this is not a sketch; it is a breathtaking epic of high-seas rebellion. It tells the story of a group of elderly accountants who, fed up with their corporate "The Very Big Corporation of America" overlords, convert their entire office building into a pirate ship and sail the financial districts of the world, plundering other skyscrapers.

It is a stunning piece of filmmaking—a swashbuckling allegory for creative freedom, geriatric rage, and the fight against soulless modernity. While tonally different from the main feature, its themes of rebellion against a meaningless, corporate existence perfectly set the stage for the existential inquiry to come.

### The Verdict: A Fittingly Absurd Final Bow

**10 out of 10 - The Pythons' Magnum Opus**

*The Meaning of Life* is the pure, uncut essence of Monty Python. It is their most philosophically coherent work, arguing that life is a bizarre, often cruel, and ultimately meaningless parade, and that the only sane response is to find the humour in the grotesque and the sublime. It is more fragmented than their previous films, but that is its strength — it is a kaleidoscope of human existence, from the ridiculousness of birth to the terrifying finality of death, all treated with the same irreverent glee.

It is the most expensive machine in the hospital, the one that goes "Ping!" — flashy, seemingly pointless, but an undeniable marvel of engineering. And in its final moments, when Eric Idle returns to sing the film's answer to the ultimate question, it delivers a conclusion that is as profound as it is silly, cementing its status as the boldest and most brilliant farewell a comedy troupe could ever give.