The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch

I'm a huge Rutles fan and I'd never even heard of this until ten minutes ago. Considering how little information is available about it online (aside from the usual synopses and cast lists), it looks like very few others had seen it either. It's curious to note that apparently the official press release lists Eric Idle as one of the founding members of the Bonzo Dog Band -- I hope everyone knows that's not correct. I also see that the DVD comes with an "Never-before-seen alternate ending" -- interesting, considering how few people have seen the regular ending. Now, to stretch this thing out to the requisite ten lines, here are some vegetables that I like: Oops. Out of space. Maybe next time.

I recently acquired the full Rutles set (albums and all) on the basis that it is my dad's favourite movie (and thus by osmosis one of mine along with everything Python related). I decided to watch the first one knowing full well that it probably hadn't aged as well compared to the memory of my teenage watching of it.

Having just come home from watching the Python Live (One Down, Five to Go Show) I was on a Python high. My dream of finally watching the Python's live had come true and I (as well as my wife who didn't have a Python loving family and thus is reluctantly late to the Python game) was on a Python high.

So, having exhausted pretty much every other Python related venue (except for Jabberwocky), Rutles seemed to be a good choice. And surprisingly it was. I even did a rare spit take, showering my wife's laptop with wine at how Barry was included in the band.

And then we (or really, I) made the decision to watch the sequel. With casual dread naturally. This being a 2002 project it was contemporary to the painful "new material" of the re-re-re-release of the Holy Grail DVD. So my expectations were set suitably low.

My relief at how actually funny the second round was a surprise like no other. Maybe it was my expectation. Maybe it was the fact that a rethread of the same subject was suitably fitting considering how every Beatles documentary ever is the same (meta-commentary?). Maybe it was the fact that Eric Idle is naturally funny. Maybe that the celebrity cameos have increased their status in the later years (Unexpected Jimmy Fallon?). Maybe how the re- thread was in the style of VH1's Behind the Music - a genre unto its own? Or maybe just how obvious it was that Idle had dragged his coat around to his many holidays and filmed short sequences with a shitty hand-held DV camera for so many scenes.

Whatever it was, it was worth the effort. I will gladly show this to my dad. My dad, who performs covers of the Beatles and will drop in a verse of Get Up And Go Back Home into every rendition of Get Back even if the audience has no idea what's going on.

Remember when "Beatles 1" came out and suddenly there was this big Beatles media blitz and all these news channels were doing all the rehashed stories on The Beatles and interviewing various people (some who weren't even musicians) about the degree of influence The Beatles had on their careers? Well, THAT is EXACTLY what Eric Idle was doing with "The Rutles 2: All You Need Is Lunch;" he's sending up the fact that all these years later, people are still doing stories about The Beatles, though they're just going over the same ground about their history and recycling the same old comments about them. So that's what "Rutles 2" satirizes. Therefore, it ISN'T EVEN TRYING to be as good as the original (awfully tough act to follow, anyway). With that said, "Rutles 2" is what it is. There are some good items in it (David Bowie gives some surprisingly memorable moments, and there's some great unused footage from the original movie), but this is something you can only watch every once in a while. Otherwise, my relatively high mark is mostly for Eric's satire/self-awareness about the whole thing.

This sequel doesn't hold a candle to the original, in fact, at times the attempts at comedy are painful.

At times, the low-budget of the film, becomes more than just a joke, it is actually annoying. The film features washed out lighting, terrible audio and rough impromptu comedy that never delivers much punch. I think at times Idle doesn't even have a crew he just stands in front of a cheap video camera, recording himself. It's funny, but not funny enough, for the entire film to be carried that way.

It's so bad in spots, that you sometimes think someone could make a parody of how cheap, and fast Eric Idle can punch out product. A parody of the parody perhaps, that's about the only way this film could ever save itself. Monty Python has become so cliché and so formulaic now that it begs for parody the way Star Trek, super heroes and other stale icons of pop culture cry out for it.

That's what this sequel is I'm afraid, old, stale pop-culture that just rubber stamps old tricks and dishes it out in liberal, repetitive doses.

It's too bad. The original is brilliant. It is a quick, sharp, witty send-up of an era and an industry that needed a solid comedic thrashing. It spanked the rampant consumer hysteria and the fan boy worship of pop idols, but did it with a lot of love and affection for the music itself.

George Harrison once referred to the original Rutles film this way: "It was actually the best, funniest and most scathing. But at the same time, it was done with the most love." There's not a lot of love in the sequel, just some cheap, quick cameos, some running gags that never pay off and some really poor sound and video to look at.

While my admiration for Idle and Python remains, these guys have become stale. If this film taught me anything, it is that someone needs to make a "Rutles-like" documentary of Monty Python, to remind us all what made them great in the first place.

With due respect to Mr Idle and Mr Innes, and hoping to avoid being the center of the fiery ire of the legion of Rutles fans worldwide, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch is the Magical Mystery Tour of the pre-fab fours' illustrious career. The charm of the original film was Neil's semi-original music: Not quite plagiarism, not quite satire, but a delicious hybrid of Lennon-McCartney-Innes that had me both yearning for the real "boys" to "Get Back" (All You Need Is Cash was first shown in 1978, and it was still a dream, a wish and a possibility in those days) and in enjoying several of the songs (forgive me) just as much as some of the original Beatles stuff.

What made AYNIC so charming and worthy of multiple listens and rewatches was the original music, and the plot that so closely follows the career and lives of our real heroes. It's weakness was Eric as Dirk/Paul, IMO and the weak interview scenes of the imaginary people affected by our heroes lives. (I'm not talking about Simon and Jagger, but the New Orleans scenes.) The other three were real musicians and the music we're hearing is really theirs; Eric didn't even come close to looking like a musician (and he admits it himself.) What you have in Can't Buy Me Lunch is the opposite of AYNIC: Not enough original music, not enough about the career and lives of our pre-fab (or fab) heroes, and too much Eric Idle. Too much focuses on the life of the "guy who interviewed the pre-fab four" and it's just not funny or interesting enough to carry the load.

If you run across the DVD go ahead and buy it and give it a watch, it's okay. But just like MMT fell way short of short of Help or Hard Day's Night, I think you'll find "Lunch" a bit of a disappointment. You might enjoy it better if you have a cup of tea before watching though! (Both are available on DVD.)