The Meaning of Life (1983) - film review

The Monty Python team take up their greatest challenge yet, one that has defied  the greatest philosophers, scientists, theologians and weather forecasters for countless millennia.  In precisely one hour and forty-eight minutes, they have set themselves the task of answering the biggest question of them all: just what is it all about?   It all begins, predictably, with birth in an NHS hospital equipped with a machine that goes Ping! and ends with death by salmon mousse at a posh dinner party, followed by a sneak preview of what comes afterwards.  Of course, the interesting bit is what happens in between these two momentous events, the messy and chaotic thing called life.  Live organ transplants, exploding bons vivants, talking fish, suicidal leaves and an office block masquerading as a pirate ship go some way towards illustrating the absurdity of existence in a Godless universe, but does any of this bring us any closer to the nub of the matter?  Just what is the meaning of life?

The last film to feature all of the members of the original Monty Python team dispenses with the coherent storyline of their last two cinematic offerings and reverts to the sketch format of their television show.  In typical Pythonesque fashion, the film makes no attempt to do what its title implies (i.e. explain the meaning of life) but instead treats us to some of the most tasteless and offensive material the team have ever devised.  You have to have a pretty warped sense of humour to find this film consistently hilarious, and it is certainly not the best choice of viewing if you are a staunch Roman Catholic (at least not unless you are in the habit of donating your offspring for scientific experimentation).  Just about every sacred cow under the sun gets slaughtered and manically eviscerated by Cleese, Palin, et al, as they endeavour to succeed where Bertrand Russell, Saint Augustine and Michael Fish so evidently failed.

To say that The Meaning of Life is a mixed bag would be to make an understatement of almost the same magnitude as describing World War II as an unfortunate difference of opinion over how to resolve the race issue.  Whilst it is a delight to see the Pythons together and recapturing some of the unpredictable anarchic madness of their first two TV series, their sketch formula clearly does not work as well on the big screen as it did on that little box in the living room.   The quality of material in this bumper helping of Pythonesque lunacy is extremely variable, ranging from the brilliantly satirical (such as an inspired musical send up of the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards contraception) to the frankly naff (exemplified by the sequence in which a convicted criminal is chased to his death by a squad of topless females, a sequence that makes Benny Hill look sophisticated).   There is around thirty minutes of top-notch comedy here, but there is a greater abundance of timewasting nonsense which makes the film appear much more tiresome and vulgar than it really is.

Like Douglas Adams before them, the Monty Python team reduce their search for the meaning of life to a statement of the absurd, although Adams does it far more succinctly and without endless disgusting digressions relating to bodily functions and existentialist philosophy.  After the superb Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life feels like reheated leftovers that have been left on a rat-infested sideboard in a germ warfare laboratory for far too long.  Just how the film came to win the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 1983 is a mystery of truly mind-boggling proportions, although if we could explain that one we would probably be half way towards understanding the meaning of life, reductio ad absurdum.

The Python fans will of course find the film hilariously funny and will probably crucify anyone who says otherwise.  Others will see it for what it really is: a cobbled together concoction of unrelated skits, many of which struggle, as pathetically as a drowning seal pup, to find humour in cheap grossness and highschool cosmology.  And further more, I take particular umbrage at the portrayal of the British Army as a collection of namby-pamby stereotypical...  Apologies, this review appears to have been hijacked by the ghost of Graham Chapman.  (It’s a good thing we have a fully qualified exorcist standing by for just this eventuality.)  Where were we?  Oh yes, The Meaning of Life.  The Pythons pretty well answered this one in their first television series, so the film does not have much more to add and feels like a wasted endeavour.  Still, anything that puts people off eating salmon mousse for life cannot be a bad thing.  If this film’s portrayal of Heaven (as an everlasting Christmas offering endless re-runs of The Sound of Music) is accurate, I personally would prefer to end up in the other place.   At least I would have the Monty Python team to keep me company.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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