Monthy Python’s Life of Brian is a 1979 production from HandMade Films. The movie is directed by Terry Jones with the writing done by the whole Monty Python group, who also play all the most important characters in the movie. This means the main stars are Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. The movie scores 8.1/10 on IMDb and is ranked in their Top 250 rated movies. Besides, the movie scored a 77 Metascore.
The Story
The story is about a regular chap, Brian, who is mistakenly seen as the Messiah. This story made for some great comedy as he is struggling to get make his demands clear to people who think everything he says is life advice. I found those moments the best in the film but to my disappointment, this story started kinda late in the movie. In my opinion, the first 30-45 minutes aren’t as great as the latter part. Most of the scenes with Brian’s mother weren’t, although the start did have some funny moments with the People’s Front of Judea and their naming problems.
One of the other main points of comedy is Pontius Pilate with a very strong lisp. In the beginning this extremely fun but over time the joke got a bit stretched out. We probably got like 15 minutes filled with jokes about lisp. I did like the end where Pontius decides Brian should be released after the crowd said so but they end up releasing the wrong guy.
The Characters
I think Brian is a great character and almost all of his scenes are great. However, I felt not like that for each character. As I said, I think the mother is a bad character. Reg had his good moments with Judith being a bit too unimportant to even mention. I am a huge fan of the old man who opens the door in the headquarters though! Those scenes are a good example of not overdoing a joke as they did with the lisp. Each time he opens the door it made me laugh, seeing all the soldier march in only the march out saying they found nothing, although everybody was hiding in quite bad spots.
The Production
As this movie is already more than 40(!) years old I don’t have a good perspective on whether or not this is good quality or not, cinematography wise. It didn’t bother me all these years later, so I guess is quite alright, although the audio quality made it hard to hear some dialogue.