Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different

Monty Python's ANFSCD is about as pure a comedy as you can get, it's just a bunch loosely connected Flying Circus sketches which range from the absurd to the mildly silly to the absurd.

I find it difficult to talk about comedies without just repeating the jokes, so instead I'd like to talk about "British Humor" and why I don't get it.

Or rather why other people "don't get it".

What's not to get? A big reason this movie was said to have flubbed in the US was because "American audiences don't get British Humor" and yet, Holy Grail is probably one of, if not THE MOST, popular comedies in America.

You telling me American audiences didn't get this over a movie specifically set in Britain?

I never understood that at all and looking up "British Humor" casts a bit of light on the issue, drawing attention to cultural proclivities like deadpan, social ineptitude, the class system, and even "taboo" topics which this movie certainly doesn't shy away from.


There's one scene in which we get a narrator describing the radio drama horror that is a woman at a typewriter as she gets literally swept away by the Yellow Peril before the United States rolls in and begins marketing "American Defense" like a commercial advertisement.

It's plainly tongue-in-cheek, but you would NEVER be able to get away with that **** nowadays. SJWs would crucify you.

Beyond that, I often just can't help but puzzle over what's so alien about the jokes in the movie. I mean it's FAR from what I would expect from a Japanese comedy, for example, but I think good comedy's fairly universal so long as you get the references.

When a couple sit down to dinner at a fancy restaurant and the guy requests a new fork because his is dirty, the entire restaurant staff trips over themselves in apology, becomes violently self-defeating, and eventually starts killing themselves and fighting each other before-

AND NOW THE PUNCHLINE:

"Good thing I didn't tell him about the dirty knife!"

What's not to get? It's funny, this isn't some bizarre British X Factor, it's "vicious gangs of keep-left signs" and "a bank robber walks into a lingerie shop", the comedy is self evident.

SOMETIMES you'll have a more thoughtful piece such as "Expedition Interview" where John Cleese plays a man with doublevision who pluralizes everything or "Nudge Nudge" where Eric Idle presses Terry Jones with rapid-fire innuendos only to admit he's a virgin, but none of that is uniquely British, it's just comedy.

Anybody can get it, it just comes slightly easier those of a British persuasion.


ANYWAY, I think ANFSCD is great, it along with Holy Grail have been huge memorable influences on my own personal sense of comedy for years.

If I had to make complaints they would obviously include the animals that appear (I'm not referring to stock footage or prop mice) and, you know, I've never been a big fan of Terry Gilliam's animations.

There are really funny ones ("and there was much rejoicing"), but they often just drift off into surreal nonsense like "Conrad Poohs and his Dancing Teeth" which is just a minute of some close-up desaturated face baring his teeth as they animate up and down to music. There's nothing to it, it's just visual drek.

For the most part though, if you're ready for sketch-city, Monty Python-style, this it it. Check it out.