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...group's subsequent invasion of the American media has exposed the Monty Python brand of humor to a large number of comedy consumers in the U.S. Gone is the thrill of belonging to a select cult based on its privileged initiation into the artistic pleasures of a little-known comedy troupe. Thanks to a deluge of Monty Python re-runs on the boob tube, the re-release of their many records at regular prices (as opposed to the exorbitant prices of imported discs), and three uneven movies, the Monty Python material has become an all-too-familiar sound to these...
...WHICH BRINGS us to the question of why Monty Python Meets Beyond the Fringe was ever conceived, much less actually released in U.S. cinemas. This movie is nothing more than a filmed recycling of some of the more famous skits staged by the Monty Python group and the lesser-known British group, Beyond the Fringe. If the former lent its name to the film for the sake of giving the latter greater exposure in a more commercial market, that's mighty big of the Monty Python people. But judging from the sloppy direction and arrangement of the skits, this latest...
Almost in the fashion of a disclaimer, Monty Python Meets Beyond the Fringe begins on an appropriately self-parodying note. The stentorian voice-over--a Python staple--introduces the film by touting the ensuing movie as an historic encounter in the annals of entertainment, accompanied by strains of Pomp and Circumstance in the background. After seeing the various members of the two comedy groups frolic about in the London streets outside of Her Majesty's Theatre for a few minutes, the movie cuts to the famous Monty Python dead parrot skit. This sequence reveals the fundamental problem with the movie...
...troupe does not seem to be above replacing the humorous with the merely offensive. At one point, one of the male Monty Python members comes out on stage tackily dressed in a gold lame evening gown with cat's-eye spectacles. Adopting a feminine-sounding falsetto, he strikes up a paean to the virtues of Britishers: "The English have a quality/I'd like to sing about/It's not the sort of quality/That's bestowed on wog or kraut...
Attired in a poorly fitting trench coat and bright red sneakers, the glazy-eyed miner presents us with an object for our compassion as well as our amusement; his sphinx-like expression never once breaks into an unprofessional grin, unlike his colleagues in the Monty Python group during some of their other skits...