Word: pythoned
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...Catholicism through the spectacle of rows of nuns. Busby-Berkeley-style, caroling that "Every sperm is sacred." But the addition of an explicit theme quiets the ridiculous proceedings somewhat, leading the film to a previously avoided mass-appeal glossiness. Distributed through Universal Pictures, Meaning of Life is the first Python film wholly backed by a major concern and released smack into the American commercial mainstream. The difference, which shows subtly in the film's professional polish, in its tilt towards topical satire and identifiable allusion, is not altogether encouraging...
Such minor infusions of relevance, though, aren't enough to stop the momentum of the comedy, which hurtles on with all Monty Python's ludicrous charm. When Cleese and Graham Chapman start mugging at the camera, the material they're acting becomes supremely irrelevant. When Terry Jones dresses up as an old crone this time as a sort of Mother Hubbard, dancing and singing with her 90 ragged children--he she looks exactly like 39 other Jones crones from Holy Grail or earlier. And fortunately, the gag is just as ridiculous the fortieth time around. There must be some deeper...
...Terry Gilliam and John Cleese and the rest met while pursuing degrees at Oxford. But then he happens to mention his Welsh roots--"I've always felt Welsh, you know, the exciteability"--and his voice goes up and up and suddenly he is jabbering away in several simultaneous Monty Python accents...
...release The Meaning of Life, the six members of Monty Python Enterprises--Jones, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Graham Chapman. Michael Palin and Eric Idle--split up and followed publicity routes, lunching with groups of admiring reviewers and cavorting before advance-screening audiences through most of March. Jones, the director, covered Boston and New York, but he admits that the effort is somewhat allen to the six-man troupe's usual way of operating. Former pictures have been supported by small independent backers, usually musicians, frequently George Harrison; work habits are commensurately informal, with the six writers splitting into teams...
...subject is out of bounds," he maintains, "you're up against the wall." Not everyone finds those standards agreeable--one backer of Jabberwocky abruptly pulled out, leaving some legal threads dangling, after he saw the script--but the strategy has paid off with audiences. Monty Python and the Holy Grail made 200,000 pounds, or about half a million dollars; Life of Brian did nearly as well...