Holy Flying Circus

I was too young to know about the controversy surrounding "The Life Of Brian" when it was first released, but in my adult years I discovered that not everyone felt the same way I did about the film - their loss.

Casting of the actors playing Monty Python cast was just about perfect from a visual point of view. The only issue I had was with the actor portraying Terry Gilliam not being able to fake an American accent effectively.

There are so many shout outs to the way the Flying Circus series was made in this film to make it almost seem like the original cast had made it in the early '80's and it had gotten lost somewhere and recently found and broadcast.

The irony of Stephen Fry portraying his particular character is outstanding.

I laughed out loud a lot while watching this "mockudramedy" and I would have given it a 10 star rating if not for the aforementioned bad American accent.

Very, very funny film. The first one that's had me in fits of laughter for years. The film mixes fact with homages to the jokes in the original film and also brings in various references from other characters that the original cast have played. The characters look very much like their real life counterparts too, so when I first started watching it I thought I was seeing a documentary. The film never takes itself too seriously, as it slips in references to the present day, despite being set in the past, and the humour is something that would sit very happily at the top of the Monty Python league. Very clever film.

I'm not going to get into the whole debate here over the "Life of Brian" which I'll leave to others. This docudrama is as it says at the start a re-imagining of the events & conversations that surrounded the Monty Python team before two of them stepped onto a late night talk show to discuss their controversial movie "Life of Brian".

Film takes the basics surrounding the "debate" and slaps a thick coating of Monty Python comedy references into the mix. The two adversaries in the debate are painted in a bad light, so the program is biased but it's mostly all for laughs.

Should take the show as an excuse to just relive the Pythoneseque humour. The program humourises the darker aspects the Pythons may have gone through (e.g. death threats) but at the end of the day they won the contest (the film is shown often on free-to-air TV in the UK and is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever).

Well acted, well scripted, you will enjoy it. A nice retelling!

This pythonesque drama about the subsequent controversy of the Monty Python film, Life Of Brian breaks out of the usual docudrama route and instead goes for the surreal, re-imagined route.

It even gets downright silly. The opening scene features Stephen Fry as God. Only the Spanish Inquisition is missing.

The cinema release of Life of Brian aroused a lot of controversy. The film depicts the threats the actors received and the subsequent showdown that had on a television debate with the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge.

Of course tensions surrounding the event are heightened and parodied. The Python team are exaggerated persona's of themselves, with Palin being too nice, Idle the money grabber, Cleese being Basil Fawlty even doing the funny walk at one point, Terry Jones appears in drag as Palin's wife.

It does show the effect the controversy had on the actors especially Palin who is shown as the reasonable everyman, frightened with the protesters outside his door.

It very much captures the absurd spirit of Python and the actors playing Palin and Cleese come out of it best.

The BBC has outdone themselves in this wonderful piece about the reception of Life of Brian. Having been taken along with 20 other pupils to see Life by my school chaplain while taking a Religious Studies A level it always has had a special place in my heart. This wonderful reconstruction captures something of the Pythons complete silliness, and the even more complete silliness of those who found Brian offensive.

This is seriously the best tribute film to the Pythons out there, the effort in casting to get it right has paid off, to say they look and act like how and who they're meant to is a gross understatement - they really do capture something of each of the Flying Circus with marvelous alacrity.

All in all, this is rude, crude, very, very silly in places, and, above all, fall on the floor funny. Quite simply, one of the funnier films I've seen recently and for those who like Python in any form this is smart and just what the doctor ordered.