And Now for Something Completely Different, screen foreplay and conception Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin - 10 out of 10

And Now for Something Completely Different, screen foreplay and conception Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
10 out of 10


Monty Python is the best comedy team ever, if you ask this cinephile and surely many others.

Monty Python's Life of Brian is probably the best comedy ever.
And Now for Something Completely Different...is hilarious, splendid, even when the humor can create more than uneasiness...

Take the parrot sketch, one of the best scenes, where the character Of John Cleese comes to return the pet to the shop, where the assistant is played by Michael Palin, who keeps saying that the animal is resting or that it moved - when he hit the cage - when we can see that the bird is just stuffed.
That makes for amusing and unhappy viewing for those who own a macaw - I have two and Balzac is exactly the blue and gold from the motion picture.

However, the shop assistant finally offers to change the dead parrot that went to meet his maker in the language of the customer, but he only has a slug...
Just as he ends this weird offer of replacement, he states that he has always wanted to be a...lumberjack.

A special one at that, wearing high heels and women's clothes...to be a girlie, just like his dear papa.
In another sketch, the same divine duo talk about career planning, where the Michael Palin personage is an account who wants to change jobs and be a...lion tamer.

When John Cleese as a consultant explains what a lion is and what taming the wild beats entails, the accountant backtracks.
The best joke in the world is invented, but it is so powerful that first its author dies, then his mother and the deadly weapon is translated into German and then used in the war.

The blackmail program is another big hit, albeit some of the fare on television may be too close for comfort to what is a big joke in this stupendous comedy.
One of my favorites is the restaurant fight, reminding one of another Monty Python treasure, which had an Indian restaurant as setting and a waiter that bends over backwards to satisfy the clients, kicking himself and abusing his person whenever he feels he is not worthy of the honored guests, which is pretty much always.

In this film, a dirty fork is on the table and when the client asks for it to be replaced, first Terry Jones, then Eric Idle come to take the affair out of all proportion, only to be followed by an ax wielding John Cleese as the cook who is maddened - if we can say that about someone who is already mad - by the request of the guests of the eatery and is bent on making them pay for their absurdity.

A great, if dark, maybe morbid moment of hilarity is offered by the dialogue between Eric Idle and John Cleese characters, as they portray clerks in an office.
One man falls by their window and let's say Idle draws the attention of his colleague who is unperturbed and disbelieved the assertion.

When another man flies by and then yet another, they dispute the identity of the individual and eventually a bet is on, with one arguing that Wilkins is going to be next and the other putting his money against it.

Come on Wilkie...Come on!
One is prompting the man to jump, from afar, while the other is prompting him to stay put...

Extraordinary.

To end this note, there is one more mention, of the apparition of another John Cleese avatar as a robber who wants all the money...

Only he is in the wrong place...this is a lingerie shop.

A phenomenal, dazzling, creative, original, spectacular, provocative, intelligent, often dark, sensational comedy.