And Now For Something Completely Different

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Screening Suggestions

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This month, I'm going over the four mainstream films brought to us by British comedy troop - Monty Python (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam).

You know how something completely random and out of the blue can be hilarious? Well, Python kinda pioneered that whole idea. Without it, Trey Parker and Matt Stone might not have even had the inspiration for 'South Park'. No really, check it out!

This particular film marks their first, and represents their sort of breakthrough to America. For almost any North American fan of Python, chances are, it all started with this, or 'Holy Grail'. For me, it was this. It was on one night, and we watched it as a family, all the while laughing our asses off at how incredibly random and funny it all was.

What we have here, is essentially a "best of", taking skits from the first two seasons of 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' (their sketch comedy show) and somewhat improving them. Each sketch is linked together by some of Terry Gilliam's strange but funny animation, it's about an hour and a half, and there's hardly anything more to be said.

The bad news is, this is a title that's seemingly pretty hard to come by. Even Netflix (Canada) has basically everything they've done except for this. The good news is that most of it can be found on YouTube in bits and pieces. I'd highly recommend looking for sketches like 'The Hungarian Phrasebook', 'Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit', 'The Dead Parrot' and 'The Upper Class Twit of the Year'. Fair warning, it's all very silly, but that's really the whole point.

There's not a lot more to be said about it, but I will end this by saying that if you're absolutely unfamiliar with Python's work, this is definitely a good place to start. I do know some out there simply can't be bothered because it's just too stupid. But I'll ask you to bear in mind that these guys were well-aware that what they were doing was stupid. Somehow, it all worked out in the end though. I suppose this supplies living proof that, indeed, sometimes you just wanna sit and watch something while your brain gets tossed out the window.

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