Monty Python 30 Years To Life

This month marks the 30th Anniversary of Meaning of Life's release (nice move on Universal's part to release it on April Fool's day)

Many people say this is Monty Python's worst and I'd have to agree. If it falls short of the 70's Monty Python film's It's still better than any other 80's comedy and in a decade of Ghostbusters and Spinal Tap, that's saying something.

Roger Ebert complained that Meaning of Life tries to hard to one-up the audience. I find it a mixed bag. Sometimes the shock humor is funny (Every Sperm is Sacred) and other times it's just gross (Carol Cleavland saying they have to leave the restaurant because she's having a rather heavy period and she doesn't want to be bleeding all over the seats). To Monty Python's credit, they do mock themselves for their excess (Graham Chapman's character being killed for gratuitous sexist jokes in a motion picture, Michael Palin's closing rant on how you need gratuitous elements to get the public to go to the movies)

Most people remember the movie for Every Sperm is Sacred or Mr. Creosote. My favorite will always be The Galaxy Song and perhaps the Monthy Pthon gang agreed since it was played over the closing credits.

The Monty Python gang deserves credit for identifying that there are American Football teams named Bears and Steelers (even today I doubt many British citizens can name 1 professional American Football team). Too bad Terry Gilliam didn't bother to tell his British buddies that Professional American Football is played on Sunday, not Saturday. The scene with the Grim Reaper has an American couple from Philadelphia. Coincidentally Meaning of Life was released 2 months before the Philadelphia 76ers won a World Championship.

The Christmas in Heaven sequence mentions Jaws 1, 2, 3 being played on TV. Actually the film would be in Theaters 3 months later and would be called Jaws 3-D. It wasn't until the video release that it was just called Jaws 3. The Christmas in Heaven segment also mentions the latest video games ( this coincidentally was the year of the huge video game industry crash).