|
EDIT NEWS: Monty Python - Press: And Now For Something Completely Different |
|
|
| | |
 |  |  |  |
|
Kinematograph Weekly [Kine Weekly], 1st December 1970, page 12
[A very interesting interview with Ian Macnaughton.
This piece has a unique picture of Cleese and
MacNaughton on location in a gym shooting the
'Self-Defence against Fruit' sketch:]
PRODUCTION
by Rod Cooper
Monty Python flies again
SO WHO NEEDS A STORY?
There have been more popular television comedy series than 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' in terms of actual viewing figures, but surely none has ever won such a devoted following from its audience. From its earliest days, when it was screened at some typically eccentric BBC 1 hour. It has won an increasingly wide circle of devotees in this country and now, it appears, in Canada.
Very much of a curate's egg at times, it still goes from strength to strength because the good bits are so good. Joy and exultations on all sides, therefore, when Americans Judd Bernard and Patricia Casey of Kettledrum Productions found financial backing from Robert Sinn and Victor Lownes to make 'And Now For Something Completely Different' with the whole circus, writer-performers Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. and director Ian Macnaughton. Carol Cleveland completes the line-up and Patricia Casey is producing.
After nearly two years of making 'Monty Python' at a rough rate shooting of a 30-minute show in three days, Ian Macnaughton has been revelling in the comparative luxury of a six-week schedule.
'I've been enjoying myself tremendously', he said, rather guiltily. 'But I think you really have to enjoy making comedy for the comedy to come through. Having more time in which to work means you can really work on each sketch until you feel it's right.
'There are other advantages too, of course. The sheer width of the screen is marvellous for comedy. For telly you'll have four cameras in four characters, but you can't possibly show all four's reactions one by one without ruining the pace. Here, we can show all four actors together. You can see all four reactions at the same time. It's a simple, obvious difference but very important.
'And shooting on actual locations instead of the corner of a studio is such an improvement'.
There is, of course, no storyline or plot. 'We're not making a film version of a television series. But we're not making a feature film in the conventional sense. [*] With a title like ours we can really get away with practically anything. If you've got six actors playing everyone, men, women � the lot, not to mention Terry Gilliam's animated sequences, you couldn't possibly have any genuine continuity throughout
.
'We realise, of course, that a lot of people amongst cinema audiences will never have seen the television show in their lives, so we can't rely on people who already like "Monty Python". But if you can make something funny then audiences will laugh. I can't think what the Americans will make of it, but the Canadians have just bought the second series unseen which might be some sort of guide. '
Formerly a RADA trained actor Macnaughton switched to television drama direction some years ago and was led inexorably to 'Monty Python' via Spike Milligan's 'Q5' series, five of which he directed.
After nearly six weeks and still on schedule � they should finish this weekend � crew and extras were still guffawing at runs through. Macnaughton and his crew exchange amiable insults and occasionally lapse into Pythonese � 'If you don't need me for the next hour I'll be round the corner, get my meaning?'. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, saynomore, saynomore.
And Now For Something Completely Different is a Kettledrum Productions/Victor Lownes and Robert Sinn presentation starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin in their original screenplay. Carol Cleveland co-stars. Produced by Patricia Casey and directed by Ian Macnaughton.
[* To make any sense, the first "not" should not be
there, i.e. "We're making a film version of a television
series. But we're not making a feature film in the
conventional sense". But it's in the text so it's in here. |
|  |  |  |  |
| | | |
|
Today's Cinema, 1st October 1971, page 16
THE NEW FILMS
Reviewed by Marjorie Bilbow
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Columbia. British. 88mm. "AA." Colour. Rel.: Not fixed.
Type of production: Zany comedy, taken from the BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Stars/Writers: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Carole [sic] Cleveland.
Prod: Patricia Casey. Dir.: Ian MacNaughton. Animations: Terry Gilliam. Animation photography: Bob Godfrey Films. Photography: David Muir.
Outline: Innumerable sketches and animated cartoons ranging in style from the mildly satirical to the amiably ridiculous. Although some of the items could, at a pinch, be described as sick by those who find them so, the blackest humour of the television series is conspicuously absent.
Box Office rating: A cult rave on television that can be reliably expected to be a cult rave in the cinema, but cannot be trusted to meet mass popularity evenly throughout the country.
Business prediction: Very good in carefully selected cinemas; dodgy elsewhere, particularly in the Midlands, NE England, Northern Ireland and Wales, where the television series is a newcomer to BBC programmes.
Critical comment: Those of us who have followed Monty Python's Flying Circus in it's will-o'-the-wisp, now you see it now you don't, progress from cautious try-out to in-crowd success will greet this film as an old friend. Which is just as well, as we have seen most of the sketches before and the element of surprise is lost. Compared with the television show, the pace of the film is greatly improved, with items that were originally allowed to grow repetitious with length tightened to a cohesive whole. But it has to be admitted that even the most brilliantly polished mosaic of bits and pieces must inevitably have patches that seem dull when the pattern is without shape. The sheer profusion of sketches works against the film because it is physically impossible to keep on laughing for 88 minutes non-stop. Craving a rest, one's sense of humour takes refuge in unresponsive trances. This is a hazard that could not be avoided if the film was to retain the style of its parent series; but inevitability doesn't make it any less of a hazard so far as audience reaction is concerned.
[Hey, there's a review of a film my Dad directed on
this page: "Not Tonight, Darling", starring Luan Peters
(you know, the Aussie on Fawlty Towers that Basil
mistakes for a light-switch). The review says that "it is
presented with so little respect for the intelligence of
even the most uncritical that the flicker of truth and
humour dies beneath the weight of embarrassment for
a cast that has to say such words and perform such
actions". Cor! And Luan Peters gets 'em out and all!] |
| | | | |
| | | |
|
Variety, 13th October 1971
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
(BRITISH-COLOR)
Collection of maniacal flashes, sketches, animation, etc. based on British TV series. Limited appeal.
London Sept. 29.
Columbia release of Victor Lownes and GSF Organisation presentation. Patricia Casey production. Directed by Ian MacNaughton. Camera (Eastmancolor), David Muir; editor, Tom Noble. Reviewed at Columbia Theatre, London, Sept. 28. '71. Running Time: 88 MINS.
With Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carole [sic] Cleveland.
Enormous b.o. success has been scored in the U.K. with recent films of hit British tv comedy series � "On The Buses," "Up Pompeii," "Dad's Army," etc. This Kettledrum comedy, acquired after shooting by Columbia, brings the sophisticated BBC-TV "Monty Phython's [sic] Flying Circus" to the big screen as "And Now For Something Completely Different." Its title can be prophetic. Success in the new format would seem far from certain.
Stretched to three times normal running times the maniacal surge of flashes, quick sketches, animation cutouts, etc., which seem fresh and fun on the small screen by the fireside becomes trite and self indulgent.
Jqck. |
| | | | |
| | | |
|
Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1971
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFERENT
Great Britain, 1971 Director: Ian Macnaughton
Cert-AA. dist-Columbia. p.c.-Kettledrum/Python. A Victor Lownes/GSF Organisation Presentation. p.-Patricia Casey. p. manager-Kevin Francis. asst. d-Doug Hermes. sc-Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin. Based on their BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus. ph-David Muir. In colour. anim-Terry Gilliam. anim. ph-Bob Godfrey. ed-Thom Noble. a.d-Colin Grimes. sp. effects-John Horton. sd. ed-Terry Poulton. sd. rec-John Brommage. with-Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland. 7,924ft. 88 mins.
An anthology of sketches from the TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus, including "Say no more, nudge, nudge", "Inflammatory Hungarian Phrasebook", "Self Defence against Soft Fruit", "Blackmail", "Hell's Grannies", "The Townswomen's Guild Reconstruction of Pearl Harbour", and "The Upper Class Twit of the Year Race".
It's a relief to discover that this cinema version of a currently successful BBC comedy series was primarily intended for American distribution, since otherwise its rehash of well-used television sketches would seem a rather pointless exercise. The Monty Python team were clearly not in any possession of any new material at the time of shooting, and the film consists of an omnibus Monty Python repeat � reshot, truncated and slightly streamlined for the big screen. Although many of the sketches included are legends in their own time, it does not alter the fact that Monty Python is essentially a parody of television methods and � as the reference in the film's title suggested � its attempts to impose unity on the material with pointless links. The team must have been aware of this, and make perfunctory obeisance to the cinema medium at the beginning, with Terry Jones as a fumbling cinema manager in a spotlight, apologising for the second feature not being as long as anticipated: again, a television reference. This said, the film is very funny, though one queries the absence of such great characters as the appalling Ken Shabby, or Mr. Hilter, campaigning "f�r ein besseres Minehead", or Terry Jones as a Minehead boarding-house lady greeting her guests, "I wont shake hands, I was just putting lard on the cat's boil".
SYLVIA MILLAR
[In Monthly Film Bulletin's January 1972 issue, in the
"Addenda and Corrigenda" section, it states that ANFSCD
"now has an A certificate."] |
| | | | |
| | | |
|
Films and Filming, January 1972, pages 59 and 61
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
Directed by Ian MacNaughton. Produced by Patricia Casey. Original screenplay by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Director of photography, David Muir. Editor, Thom Noble. Art Director, Colin Grimes. A Kettledrum-Python Productions production, distributed by Columbia. British. Colour. Cert. A. 88 mins.
GRAHAM CHAPMAN; JOHN CLEESE; TERRY GILLIAM; ERIC IDLE; TERRY JONES; MICHAEL PALIN; CAROL CLEVELAND and CONNIE BOOTH.
The only trouble is � it isn't. Completely different, that is. It is, in fact, pretty much the same as the television series although for Monty Python fans the film may come as a bit of a disappointment. In re-making a selection of sketches from the TV programme, some of the original spark has been lost. The Upper Class Twit of the Year Contest, for example, has already been seen on television at least twice and in the film seems less manic than when I first saw it.
Inevitably, when selecting material, the team have omitted items which I would like to have seen included but no-one is going to agree on the ideal ingredients for a film like this. There is no Ministry of Silly Walks; no Spanish Inquisition; no Confuse-a-Cat; no Hitler in hiding at a seaside boarding house. It is, perhaps, pointless to regret what is not there � perhaps they will make a sequel in which these sketches will be included.
Monty Python is based very soundly on teamwork: there are no stars. Each member of the remarkably talented cast has equal opportunities and they also have their own specialities. John Cleese is unequalled in his portrayals of bone-headed bureaucrats: in the film he ascends rare heights of ridicule as Sir John Head, the mountaineer with double vision. Graham Chapman has a distinct middle-class bearing which lends authenticity to his military officers whereas Eric Idle has a neat line in self-consciously trendy TV interviewers. Michael Palin can assume an air of exaggerated bonhomie or gangster toughness as the occasion demands. Terry Jones is perhaps best in his suburban housewife drag act although he can also drum up a pretty convincing snivelling sycopant. And lastly, Terry Gilliam's animation, which is perfectly in key with the live-action material. There is, it must be said, nothing new about his technique: it's not what he does, it's the way he does it.
The team have made only minor concessions to the cinematic form but the range of their humour is clearly demonstrated. From the cheerful idiocy of a Townswomen's Guild re-enacting Pearl Harbour to the rigidly controlled exaggeration of the discovery of a dirty fork in a restaurant, there's a strong emphasis on the oddities of human behaviour. Like so much good comedy, the sketches are often only one step on from reality: the two clerks taking bets as their suicidal superiors fall past the window is curiously convincing. In the midst of all the clowning there is one strangely poignant moment: Michael Palin describes to John Cleese (playing a policeman) the theft of a wallet. Cleese is unable to act due to a lack of evidence and Palin, after shuffling his feet for a while, says 'Want to come back to my place?' to which Cleese replies 'Yes � all right.' This is far removed from the usual type of Monty Python material that I wonder at its purpose.
It's fair to say that there are, for me at any rate, no dud scenes in the whole film: 88 minutes passed very quickly and the film should prove popular with those who have seen the TV shows or would like to have but were denied the opportunity. If another feature is planned, it would be interesting to see something with a little more cohesion and perhaps some sort of narrative. If anyone is equipped to parody existing movie genres, it is Messrs. Cleese, Chapman, Gilliam, Idle, Jones, Palin � and Python.
DAVID RIDER |
| | | | |
| | | |
|
Variety, 16th August 1972, page 18
[Why was ANFSCD reviewed twice by Variety? I dunno,
but I would guess once each time for the U.K. and U.S.
releases.]
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
(BRITISH-COLOR)
Funny, but with slow stretches, big-screen version of British television show. Comes off like "Chuckle-In".
Columbia Pictures release of Kettledrum-Python Productions � Playboy Productions presentation (executive producer, Victor Lownes 2d; produced by Patricia Casey). Directed by Ian Macnaughton. Screenplay and conception, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin; camera (color), David Muir; film editor, Thom Noble; animations, Terry Gilliam; art director, Colin Grimes; asst. director, Doug Hermes. Reviewed at Columbia homeoffice, N.Y., Aug. 7, '72.
MPAA Rating - PG). Running Time: 88 MINS.
With Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, Connie Booth.
The title of this British television show on which this comedy import is based, "Monty Python's Flying Circus", is indication that it belongs, hopefully, to the "Laugh-In" genre. And it almost makes it.
A loony, uninhibited, irreverent and at times even a bit immoral collection of blackout sketches, "Different" starts off living up to its title, with a gag treatment of "the value of not being seen." As various individuals are asked to "appear" they're shot, blown up, and otherwise eliminated. It's the sort of thing that one enjoys but hopes won't be repeated but, of course, it will.
The cast, and a fine collection of zanies they are, are also responsible for most of the script, as such, when the treatment is live. However, the sequences are bridged frequently with animation (that borrows a great deal from Peter Max), credited to cast member Terry Gilliam. Some of it is funny; some comes over heavyhanded.
There's little consistency in the guffaws aroused. After a good beginning, there's a tedious period but then the laughs (or rather chuckles) come along fairly consistently with the exception of one anti-American item that left the screening room audience sitting on its hands. Sex and its hang-ups provide much of the humor as does a bit on Hungarians with a translation problem; grannie gangs picking on juveniles; marriage counselods [sic]; a self-defence class, etc.
Produced by American Patricia Casey (whose chief claim to fame is an association with Judd Bernard on such films as "The Man Who Had Power Over Woman"), it is directed by Ian Macnoughton [sic], who also helms the tv series on which it is based. He doesn't yet understand the merits of not prolonging skits that depend in visual comedy for their effect, which accounts for most of the draggy periods.
The cast is superior to its material (which they provided) but never admits it. Sometimes brilliant, generally funny, they're to be encouraged, in both comedy writing and playing. Perhaps one Peter Sellers or Marty Feldman may yet emerge.
All technical aspects are good to excellent although the lightning, perhaps intentionally, gets short shrift on occasion. At trade screenings one never is sure whether it's the print or the projectionist. Marketability is still undecided and its first date, Aug. 22, is into an East Side art house, 68th St. Playhouse, which has an excellent track record for lengthy runs but usually with the product of the Chabrol-Rohmer school.
Robe. |
| | | | |
| | | |
|
Filmfacts, volume 15, number 18, 1972
[This review is a compilation of other U.S. reviews,
including the Variety one reprinted above. Three reviews,
from Newsweek, Newsday and Cue, are seemingly repeated
in full. Incidentally, "Alf 'n' Family" was the U.S. title of the
Til Death Us Do Part film.]
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
BRITISH (1971). A KETTLEDRUM-PYTHON PRODUCTION. A VICTOR LOWNES/GSF PRESENTATION for PLAYBOY PRODUCTIONS. Released in the U.S. by COLUMBIA PICTURES. Executive Producer: VICTOR LOWNES. Producer: PATRICIA CASEY. Director: IAN MACNAUGHTON. Screenplay and Conception: GRAHAM CHAPMAN, JOHN CLEESE, TERRY GILLIAM, ERIC IDLE, TERRY JONES and MICHAEL PALIN; Based on the BBC Television Series MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS. Photography: DAVID MUIR. Music: (no credit). Editor: Thom Noble. Art Direction: COLIN GRIMES. Animation: TERRY GILLIAM; Animation Photography: BOB GODFREY. Special Effects Consultant: JOHN HORTON. Sound: TERRY POULTON and JOHN BROMMAGE. Costumes: KEN LEWINGTON. Makeup: JIMMY EVANS. Hairstyles: IVY EMMERTON. Post Production Supervisor: TIM HAMPTON. Production Manager: KEVIN FRANCIS. Asst. Director: DOUG HERMES. Color (uncredited). 89 Mins. [PG].
� The Performers �
GRAHAM CHAPMAN JOHN CLEESE
ERIC IDLE TERRY JONES
MICHAEL PALIN CAROL CLEVELAND
TERRY GILLIAM CONNIE BOOTH
Synopsis
And Now for Something Completely Different is an anthology of sketches based on the BBC-TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus interwoven with animated sequences created by Terry Gilliam. Among the highlights � As the cameras of a TV documentary focus on a vast and seemingly deserted landscape, the complacent narrator informs the viewer that "in this picture there are 47 people, none of whom can be seen;" when the participants are then asked to reveal themselves, each is shot or bombed as he emerges from hiding, with the narrator calmly concluding, "this demonstrates the virtue of not being seen"... When someone publishes a Hungarian-English phrase book in which such questions as "Do you have any matches?" are rendered as "Will you come up to my room, I am no longer infected?," numerous Hungarians in London come to grief; although the publisher is eventually arrested, it is not before one hapless Hungarian, searching for the nearest railway station, blurts out to a startled passerby "Please fondle my buttocks"... The citizens of London cower in terror when street gangs of elderly ladies suddenly run amuck; no respecters of race, creed or sex, Hell's Grannies engage in such anti-social activities as assaulting young people with their pocketbooks, carting away telephone booths and defacing public edifices with such revolutionary slogans as "Make Tea, Not Love."... A television program called Blackmail shows incriminating films of people's indiscretions which the victim can only stop by phoning in and agreeing to pay a sum that increases every few seconds as the film unreels; during one show, the moderator expresses his unqualified admiration for the fortitude of a man who resists calling in until the very last moment... During the Second World War, a jokester named Ernest Scribbler writes the world's funniest joke as a secret weapon, the British army translates it into German, distributes it to the Nazi troops and achieves an instant victory as the enemy soldiers die laughing in the trenches... When an irate customer storms into a pet shop and accuses the manager of having sold him a dead parrot earlier that day, the proprietor refuses to refund his money; as the man slams the lifeless bird on the counter and shouts "it's bleedin' demised!," the unperturbed manager replies that it only looks dead because it is a Norwegian parrot and is pining for the fjords.
Critique
SUMMARY. Like Alf 'n' Family (page 377), And Now For Something Completely Different is another British film based on a highly popular BBC-TV comedy series (in this case, Monty Python's Flying Circus) that delighted most American critics. Noting that this "madhouse revue" was a descendent of "the gone-but-not-forgotten Goon Show of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe," Time's Jay Cocks claimed that the "interesting import," in which "the writing often sounds as though it had been done inside a padded call," was a sterling example of "how to raise nonsense to dizzying heights." The Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, similarly mentioning that the picture "has the same wackiness as BBC radio's Goon Show" in its attempt "to try anything for a laugh," conjectured that "perhaps this weirdly original British film could be described as Laugh-In done with wit and intelligence." The Los Angeles Times' Charles Champlin, after commenting that "admirers of Laugh-In will likely feel that only the accent has changed," pronounced this "avalanche of skits, sight gags and blackouts" "heroically demented." And New York's Sally Beauman wrote that so much of this "extremely funny" "mad mix of revue, whimsy and satire" was "pure joy" that it "should be seen," adding that "the monstrously macabre animated graphics of Terry Gilliam are classics of black comedy." While virtually every other critic likewise applauded Gilliam's animated sequences and further agreed with 'Robe' that "the cast is a fine collection of zanies" who were "sometimes brilliant," 'Robe' expressed mixed reactions to the film as a whole. Describing the "long, uninhibited, irreverent and at times even a bit immoral collection of blackout sketches" as reminiscent of "the Laugh-In genre," 'Robe' found the results alternately "funny" and "tedious" and blamed the latter portions on director Ian Macnaughton � "He doesn't yet understand the merits of not prolonging skits that depend on visual comedy for effect, which accounts for most of the draggy periods." Of a like frame of mind, the New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann told his readers that "the trouble with the film is that any picture whose sole aim for 89 minutes is just to make you laugh by any means it can think of, cannot possibly succeed in that aim;" conversely, Kauffmann conceded that "on the other hand, any film by bright people that tries for 89 minutes to make you laugh ought to succeed some of the time, and this does." The only reviewer left stone-faced by the manic proceedings, in fact, was the N.Y. Times' Howard Thompson, a professed "rabid Anglophile who loves everything English." Reporting that he "came away from this picture stiff as a plank," and that "compared to this The Beverly Hillbillies seems downright Shakespearian," Thompson complained that "the film has a sniggering penchant for limp-wristed camp" and queried: "Where's the wit?" But the New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt � rejoicing that "nothing is sacrosanct" in the "battily funny film," "least of all patriotism and any sort of bigotry" � challenged Thompson by calling the picture "insanely witty." Overall, it was the N.Y. Daily News' Kathleen Carroll who summed up the sentiments of her colleagues by endorsing this "hilarious sideshow of outrageously wacky sketches" that was "in a sense Britain's answer to Laugh-In, except that the sketches are much more developed." Although granting that "there are moments that drag" and that the picture was at times "just downright silly," Miss Carroll nonetheless concluded: "But if you want something completely different, something slightly irreverent and totally mad, this is the movie for you."
Critical Consensus: 7 favorable, 3 mixed, 2 negative.
NEWSWEEK. "Like the celebrated British revue Beyond the Fringe and the freewheeling Goon Show broadcasts that launched Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, And Now for Something Completely Different dances gleefully on the grave of upper-crust English institutions and moribund Establishment mores. An elaboration on a popular BBC comedy show called Monty Python's Flying Circus, it marshals all sorts of comic ammunition � from fanciful sketches that send up British Puritanism to weird, mail-order catalogue cartoon sequences that show cars eating pedestrians. It is a scattershot attack on practically everything stuffy. The stiff-upper-lip sort of British Blimp gets the worst of it, but every social class goes under attack � far, as in any wild comic assault, the cry here is anarchy... The film is carried by five talented young men � Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin � who got their training in the variety shows of Oxford and Cambridge. They are all first-rate performers, well schooled in the arts of improvisation, which gives this free-form movie its lose gait. Their smaller sketches work best � the confrontation between a pet-shop owner and a man to whom he has sold a stone-dead parrot; the vaudevillian who makes music by beating 23 mice with large wooden mallets... Director Ian Macnaughton ties these sketches together fluidly, sometimes by ringing in disapproving figures who chide the film for being silly or outrageous, sometimes by merely taking a figure from one sketch and leading him into another, but most often with brilliant bits of animated collage by an American, Terry Gilliam. His fanciful creation of a giant pussycat tiptoeing over London and then eating it, his invention of a man whose teeth turn into a dancing keyboard and his conversion of Venus on the halfshell into a dancing fool lend the film a delightfully surrealistic cast. This cavalcade of insanity climaxes with 'Upper Class Twit of the Year,' an Olympics for catatonic and demented aristocrats, which locates the film as part of that ongoing under-class revolution that exploded in the late 1950s. It is a specifically British obsession, this flogging of the privileged class � but it is so wildly, spastically played that, like the entire film, it transcends its cultural context. It comes at a good time, when the supply of good comedy is so low here that, unfortunately, we must import it." Paul D. Zimmerman (9/4/72).
NEWSDAY. "The essential problem with And Now for Something Completely Different is that an hour and a half of 'Conrad Poohs and His Musical Teeth' is an awful lot of 'Conrad Poohs and His Musical Teeth.' The animated Mr. Poohs � whose dangerously bright eyes scan the audience while his teeth work like the hammers in a piano movement � is not actually on view for the entire time. But such a torrent of similar people, jokes and routines accompany him that the film, for all the bits that seem funny in theory or retrospect, is rather punishing to watch. And Now compiles, restaged for the screen, segments of a popular BBC television series called Monty Python's Flying Circus. ('Monty Python,' in turn, is a third-or forth-generation descendant of the BBC's 1950s radio program The Goon Show. What leaves you crying for more at 30 minutes length can leave you begging for less at an hour and a half � especially in a theater, where somebody is always laughing and where, moved by a primitive instinct of self-protection, one inevitably joins in, only to end up feeling wrung out and a little cheated. Like that laughter, much of the film's comedic technique is mechanical, based on the devices of reversal (rampaging gangs of grannies) and relentlessly logical exaggeration (the entire staff of a posh restaurant running amok over a dirty fork). Admittedly, sometimes this works: I liked the ferocious instructor in self-defence with a fruit fixation who insists on showing what to do if a man attacks you armed with a banana... For the most part, however, the film's best moments are based on such traditional British causes of mirth as xenophobia, sadistic violence, class hatred and the persecution of sexual minorities. It would be a picture to see, rather than get your friends to describe to you, if only more of it were up to the level of, say, the sketch about the Hungarian whose phrase book tells him that the English for ordering a pack of cigarettes is 'Hold your body against mine. I am no longer infected'... Among the film's half-dozen actor-writers, the most easily recognisable is John Cleese, who looks like a suave, elongated Punch. The cartoon segments with which the live action is interspersed, and which in England have become a cult within a cult, are by Terry Gilliam. They mostly feature strangely lit landscapes, jointed steel engravings and parts of the human body, and while not my cup of tea, I can see that occasionally � as when a huge mutant cat walks into London on its hind legs � they're inspired." Martine Levine (2/25/72).
CUE. "And Now for Something Completely Different is surely different � hilarious, too � this free-form blend of the style of America's Laugh-In, wit reminiscent of the late Robert Benchley, the odd-ball quality of British humor at its craziest, and a flock of very talented sketch performances. All of which may give you some idea of what's in store, watching this bundle of kooky comedy from Britain. Perhaps it would be too much to expect all of it to work. You have to endure the lapses. But when deliriously in order, the comic results are truly rib-tickling... We get a collection of blackout skits, animation, commentary, asides, all geared to make us laugh, and handled by a marvelous repertory company or performers, each in an assortment of roles. I particularly liked the 'Hell's Grannies,' a gang of old ladies who attack youths with their pocketbooks; the double-visioned explorer trying to climb 'both' peaks of Kilimanjaro; the TV audience participation show Blackmail, and competition for 'Upper Class Twit of the Year.' Malice runs jauntily through it all, with many characters winding up as corpses. Funny chaps, the English." William Wolf (8/26/72). |
| | | | |
|
|
|
© 1970 - 1975 various authors | |
|
| |
