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Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 2, Episodes 7-13
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DVD Cover InformationActor: Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones Brand: A&E Writer: Graham Chapman Writer: John Cleese Writer: Terry Gilliam Writer: Eric Idle Writer: Terry Jones Writer: Michael Palin Cinematographer: Terry Hunt Cinematographer: Max Samett DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 204 minutes DVD Release Date: 1999-09-28 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: A&E Home Video Product features: - Contains episodes 7-13 from Season 1 of Monty Python s Flying CircusA fathomless source of profound non-sequiturs, from I m a Lumberjack and I m OK, to This is an ex-parrot! Mony Python s Flying Circus has supplanted Shakespeare as the British variety act most quoted by people who haven t actually seen the original show in the original order as it is here. In fact Monty Python is nearly indistingu
Movie Reviews of Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 2, Episodes 7-13Movie Review: Albatross! Summary: 5 Stars
The scene where Eric Idle whines "Oh, you're no fun anymore!" is a deceptive one.
If anything, these guys are even more fun than before. The second half of Monty Python's Flying Circus's first season is even more polished and mad than the first, continuing the tradition of short skits focused on complete insanity.
In these episodes, we have: a serial-killer barber; lecherous art critics; an unfortunate man who tries to eat a cathedral, tunnel to Java and jump the English channel; Ken Shabby, every girl's dad's nightmare; thuggish old ladies; bloodthirsty librarians who want to hire a gorilla; camel-spotting; and prime ministers falling through the earth's crust.
The longest and most bizarre skit is one where people mysteriously start turning into Scotsmen and streaming north of the border. Soon "Scotland will be choked with SCOTSMEN," and England is pretty much abandoned. The culprits: tennis-playing, human-devouring blancmanges from the galaxy of Andromeda.
And, of course, the stuff that has become comedy legend: the scene where John Cleese tries to return a dead parrot to a pet store ("It's a stiff! Bereft of
life, it rests in peace!"), and the Lumberjack Song ("I cut down trees. I skip and jump/I like to press wild flowers/I put on women's clothing/And hang around
in bars...").
Of course, no mere description can do justice to the comic brilliance of these dozens of skits. These five Brits (and one American, who did the little cartoons) created some of the most unabashed, naughty, nasty, and just plain weird comedy ever, which still influences everything from Saturday Night Live to author Jasper Fforde.
And all of this by men who often dress up as the world's most unattractive girls, with only a tiny budget and minimal cast. The 70s production values are omnipresent, and they are decidedly unpolitically correct. But in a weird way, these only make it even funnier than it would have been otherwise -- the writing and acting are pure, raw, unrefined comedy.
Probably the most memorable actors here are Cleese and Idle. Cleese does his psychotic shrieks better than anyone, as well as having that rubbery lanky body and howling monkey voice. And Eric Idle does a good job as everyone from a housewife to a wannabe mountain climber, while Michael Palin does a brilliant job as people who are timid or insane.
By this point, the Monty Python guys had polished up their skits and reached a steady plateau of comic brilliance. In other words, it's funny and should be watched.
Summary of Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 2, Episodes 7-13Contains: the lumberjack song a dead parrot the upperclass twit of the year and hells grannies. Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2000 Run time: 237 minutes Rating: Nr Michael Palin, haggard and exhausted under a scraggly beard and wild hair, crawls out of the ocean (or the forest or a side of a mountain) and croaks the now-infamous "It's...." Suddenly, the "Liberty Bell" march pounds over the cut-out animation of Terry Gilliam. It's another episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. No comedy has inspired such a fanatical following before or since, and the 45 episodes turned out by the group in their all-too-brief three and a half seasons have become classics. This set presents the final seven episodes of their inaugural season, a time of trial and error for the group as they perfected the elusive free-association structure that would define the wacky comedy. Connecting such all-time classics as the Lumberjack Song, the Dead Parrot sketch, and the epic Science Fiction sketch (featuring the tennis mad Blancmanges from outer space) are the ubiquitous letters to the BBC, Terry Gilliam's whimsical and ridiculous animated inserts, and John Cleese announcing, "And now for something completely different" with all the authority of a BBC announcer who suddenly finds his news desk hijacked by mobsters. The Pythons hit their first-season stride in the middle episodes, in which brilliant sketches and strange and wonderful linking gags come together with an absurd logic, but if the final episodes of the series flag compared to their comic peak, their brand of comic madness infects every episode with moments of pure lunatic magic. --Sean Axmaker
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