Terry Jones
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Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Directed by Ruben Östlund
influenced by Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Visuals Themes
…the greatest torrent of barf onscreen since Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life ensues…
…would make Monty Python’s Mr Creosote blush…
One of the latter — The Meaning of Life’s Mr. Creosote — could be the inspiration for the orgy of bodily fluids that eventually follows, though the Monty Python sequence had the good sense to last for a few minutes…
In Östlund’s mind, it would look like the Mr. Creosote sketch in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
Östlund’s flair for on-the-nose comedy reaches a zenith on a stormy night at sea, when a shellfish dinner goes awry and cues the largest volume of bodily fluids depicted on screen this side of Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life (1983).
…con un approccio satirico che raggiunge l’apice in una scena, già mitica dopo le prime proiezioni a Cannes, di conati di vomito che non hanno nulla da invidiare al celebre Mr. Creosote di montypythoniana memoria.
Written by Gene Stupnitsky, Lee Eisenberg and director Harold Ramis, the movie’s obvious inspiration is Life of Brian, but it never manages to reach (or even approach) the manic heights of that Monty Python classic.
Ramis has said that he was inspired by such comedies as Monty Python’s Life of Brian but the movies that I kept thinking of while watching Year One were Mel Brooks’ late-career efforts like Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
Biblical times were milked for raunchy but riotous laughs in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but the well seems to have run dry when it comes to Year One, a disastrous comedy that’s the cinematic equivalent of an old-fashioned flogging.
What he doesn't acknowledge is the film's debt to English comedy - specifically Monty Python's Life of Brian and perhaps a few Carry On farces.
“Year One” keeps the elements simple for Ramis, as writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky script a broad adventure wide open for celebrity cameos, knowing winks at biblical highlights, and constant one-liners -- along the lines of Mel Brooks’s “History of the World” or Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.”
To compare the inane "Year One" to a Monty Python comedy like "Life of Brian" is like saying a Natural History lecture is as thrilling as Raquel Welch in a pelt.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Plot Dialogue Themes
I know I said “dramatic possibilities,” but it would be personally disingenuous of me to pretend that I’ve seen a greater Arthurian movie than “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
The brash British director has thrown out nearly all preexisting Athurian notions and come up with a smoking new riff on the famous sword-in-the-stone tale that makes “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” look like a work of rigorous historical scholarship by comparison.
Co-written by Ritchie, his screenwriting partner Lionel Wigram and Joby Harold (the upcoming “Robin Hood” revival), “Legend of the Sword” may be the most entertaining Arthurian movie since “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — not that they’re in any way similar.
It’s a story that’s been told before, in cartoon form and in live action, on TV and in film, from the glorious absurdity of Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the dreadful 2004 King Arthur which wasted a perfectly good actor in Clive Owen.
To borrow a Monty Python and the Holy Grail tagline, Ritchie’s King Arthur is “another film completely different from some of the other films which aren’t quite the same as this one is.”
Ritchie has been getting a lot of grief for this, but while his movie doesn’t really work, he hasn’t committed sacrilege – Monty Python and the Holy Grail showed that audiences were ready to laugh at the forests-and-fog fustiness of classic versions, and Antoine Fuqua had no lock with his straight-faced King Arthur.
The Invention of Lying (2009)
Directed by Ricky Gervais
influenced by Life of Brian (1979)
Plot Themes
His account of the glorious afterlife awaiting his dying mother is overheard, and before you can say ''Life of Brian'', Mark is seen as a messiah with all-seeing powers.
On the verge of becoming a modern-dress Life Of Brian, it instead settles for My Alternate Universe Best Friend’s Wedding in a final act given over to Gervais’ attempts to win Garner’s heart without telling a lie.
Allegorical elements add some intriguing subtext (although Monty Python addressed the same issues with Life of Brian 30 years ago), but Gervais and Robinson have a too-light touch, centring on set pieces that are goofy and amusing but don't dip too far beneath the surface.
At any rate, Mark's transformation into a messiah too closely recalls Monty Python's "Life of Brian," a far sharper comedy.
The film takes off with all pistons firing, fusing a more accessible Idiocracy with the absurdity of TheLife of Brian.
This group debate about ethics is the film's best scene by far, reminiscent of Monty Python's Life of Brian or some of George Carlin's classic atheist rants.
The Green Knight (2021)
Directed by David Lowery
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Visuals Themes Dialogue
In these moments, Lowery evokes everything from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Where the Wild Things Are to Prometheus .
As far as King Arthur films go, “The Green Knight” has a lot more in common with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” than most newer, high-energy takes, such as Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”
They’re also subtly funny, though, in ways that can’t help but conjure images from the more ubiquitous and absurd Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The mythical, adventure-packed drama The Green Knight is the best Arthurian adaptation this side of Monty Python and the Holy Grail .
When the forgettable Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie came out a few years ago I was making jokes in my head about Monty Python and the Holy Grail the entire time; I did none of that for Green Knight .
His underreaction to his beheading brings John Cleese’s “a mere flesh wound” (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) to mind.
The Last Duel (2021)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Themes
…getting the tone exactly right, something that's especially crucial when the spectre of Monty Python and the Holy Grail looms large in every scene (it's full of French taunters, for example)…
Alehouses ring to the clatter of tankards while Pythonesque minstrels lurk in the shadows.
As for the last duel itself, it is so extended it does put you in mind of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (‘’Tis but a scratch.’ ‘A scratch? Your arm’s off!’)
Your Highness (2011)
Directed by David Gordon Green
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Plot Themes Dialogue
There are some amusing one-liners but the majority of the comedy makes one realize how brilliant Monty Python and the Holy Grail is.
The bulk of the film consists of that quest, and there are echoes – on a juvenile level to be sure – of “Monty Python And The Holy Grail” and “The Princess Bride.”
For every "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," there are countless woebegone failures like 2009's " Year One ."
But McBride and company haven't worked hard enough to create the puffy, pretentious, formal diction of a king's court (the gold standard being "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"), and without that contrast, the gags become tiresome and repetitive.
The decision to stick with the filthy gags instead of the insightful intelligent ones seen in similar medieval parodies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, keeps it from being memorable.
Army of Darkness (1992)
Directed by Sam Raimi
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Dialogue
One scene will echo the quick banter of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975), and the next will replicate the Three Stooges' eye-poke block, with Ash deflecting bony hands that also try to pick his nose.
The King (2019)
Directed by David Michôd
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Visuals
Netflix Robert Pattinson channels Monty Python and the Holy Grail as the French dauphin in The King.
In this film it seems the actor has finally realised his limitations and based his performance on a careful study of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
When you watch what Scott is doing here, you are instantly reminded of far better films - but should one of them really be thinking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
The bulk of the movie—and there’s a lot of bulk—has to do with keeping Godfrey from dividing English loyalty, which would allow the nasty Frenchmen to invade (we keep being assured the Frenchmen are nasty, even if they sound like guards from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)).
The Death of Stalin (2017)
Directed by Armando Iannucci
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
There’s an attention to period detail reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Life of Brian (Michael Palin also pops up in the cast) and none of the stiffness or hindsight of bad historical storytelling.
King Arthur (2004)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Themes Music
There's the 1960 Broadway musical, Camelot, which lent its name to the 1,000 days of John F. Kennedy's presidency, and even a brilliant parody in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
JILL: It demystifies the Arthurian legend more than any film since Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because this king does in fact have shit all over him.
The tradition was perpetuated in the 20th century by T.H. White (The Once and Future King), Mary Stewart (The Crystal Cave and its several sequels), Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Mists of Avalon), and, of course, by countless cinematic adaptations, including Robert Bresson's Lancelot du lac, John Boorman's Excalibur, Jerry Zucker's First Knight, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
So Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table – Lancelot (Ioan Gruffud), Bors (Ray Winstone), Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) and the rest – embark on their mission as audiences struggle to forget the coconut shell clip-clop noises from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Even the comic telling in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is better than this.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Characters
(One is reminded of the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": Apparently, when you're The Bride, a shotgun blast to the chest is merely a flesh wound.)
Bruce Almighty (2003)
Directed by Tom Shadyac
influenced Absolutely Anything (2015), Life of Brian (1979)
Themes Plot
Bruce Almighty tackled this idea over a decade ago, and you quickly realise that the Jim Carrey blockbuster executed it with much more wit and invention.
Directed by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, who should know better, it’s an aggressively witless Bruce Almighty rip-off that sees the newly empowered Pegg seducing neighbour Kate Beckinsale, enlarging his own penis and trudging through a plethora of “jokes” so leaden that the movie eventually seems to take…
Although Jones has said he loosely based the story around H.G. Wells' short story, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, modern audiences are more likely to compare it to 2003's Bruce Almighty, starring Jim Carrey.
What should be a wild, unruly, possibly sacrilegious fable � think Life of Brian � becomes a didactic companion piece to The Truman Show, with Carrey as hapless puppeteer instead of hapless puppet.
Perhaps fearful of the reception that accompanied other films that attempted to fuse edgy humor with genuine thoughts and feelings about the nature of God (such as "Life of Brian" and "Dogma"), "Bruce Almighty" chooses to lay its "God is great" message with all of the subtlety of an especially ham-fisted Sunday-school teacher.
The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
…on more than one occasion, our champion is forced to leg it back to his boat in the manner of Monty Python’s King Arthur (“Run away!”).
Ready Player One (2018)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
It’s still a visual festival of ‘80s culture that sometimes hinges significant jokes on the assumption that the audience knows the filmography of Robert Zemeckis, or will chortle over a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail .
It’s unsurprising that many players choose to use Street Fighter or Halo characters as their in-world avatars, or that the in-game items reference ’70s and ’80s mainstays like Child’s Play and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Macbeth (2015)
Directed by Justin Kurzel
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Themes
With so much fighting and bleeding and emoting in the misty countryside, it was hard not to think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Assassination Nation (2018)
Directed by Sam Levinson
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The film pushes itself to its painfully boring and underwhelming ending on fumes, and what initially looks like it’s going to be a super fun action sequence unintentionally echoes the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, at least in the sense that they ran out of money and had to do something to finish the fucking thing.
The Zero Theorem (2013)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced by Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Themes
Gilliam, whose origins as an animator show up in the images he dreams up for every one of his films, already had a lot of fun with some of these concepts in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983).
However, Gilliam and his amazing Monty Python cohorts did that way better with The Meaning of Life many years ago.
Never mind that "The Zero Theorem" is essentially an obscure synonym for the already-taken "The Meaning of Life."
The Physician (2013)
Directed by Philipp Stölzl
influenced by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Visuals
Whether home in England — where the living conditions mirror the mud-caked squalor of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — or abroad in the relatively enlightened Persian city of Isfahan, Rob must contend with the pervasive distrust of science.