Monty Python Live (Mostly)

The Pythons are in their 70s, they have been one man down for 25 years and they have got back together one last time to make a lot of dosh and help pay for John Cleese's recent divorce.

The last night at the O2 was simulcast around the world and nearly live on British television, I say nearly live so for the early part of the show broadcast in the early evening, the swearing was bleeped out. The unedited version went out the next day.

So here are the remaining Pythons, older croakier and a few with forgetful memories. Terry Jones is the worse with memory issues but old age and ill health catches with us all. Eric Idle is still energetic and he gets to sing his catchy songs including looking at the brighter side of life.

Terry Gilliam known with the Pythons more for his animation and better known these days as a director and battling to raise money to make films throws himself with gusto at the sketches. As with Idle he is giving 100% commitment, his movements are just more snappier as if to tell the rest of the team that he has still got it and tell Hollywood to give him more money to make the movies that he wants to make.

Eddie Izzard and Mike Myers turn up for a spin as fan-boys and Carol Cleveland helps out with the sketches just like in the old days.

It's been a while since I have since the TV shows and I have never seen videos of their live shows such as Live from The Hollywood Bowl. To be honest I was reluctant to see this. In recent years Cleese seems to be a curmudgeon always complaining about something and even Palin in his recent travel shows has become more croakier.

However after a few minutes you get used to the older troupe and once the famous sketches and songs start to arrive you get into the spirit of the thing. There are a few ad-libs, a few forgotten lines and a little mischief here and there. The dancers make the whole thing a little more professional and although I believe that there were a few new sketches they were omitted from the uncensored repeat (I guess they will turn up as DVD extras.) We want to see the old hits. The dead parrot sketch, Spam song, Lumberjack song, Blackmail, Nudge nudge wink wink say no more.

So what if they did it for the money, it keeps the old fans happy, maybe get a younger audience and a nice pension for them

I found the whole thing to be rather flat and forced. The problem, in my opinion, stems from the Pythons putting on this big, extravagant, over-long show - perhaps to justify the high ticket cost of seeing the show there in London? - with endless dancing and musical numbers, and some celebrity guest stars (on the DVD we only see Mike Meyers and Eddie Izzard on stage with the troupe; Warwick Davis and Stephen Fry, among others, also appeared during the show's run, and can be seen, briefly, in the DVD extras. Brian Cox and Stephen Hawkins appear in a funny taped segment).

The old skits performed here feel tiresome; the clips from Flying Circus are too familiar to be funny. The only genuine laughs occurred when one of the Pythons deviated from the anticipated - either purposely (a new gag scripted into an old skit) or accidentally (because someone has flubbed/forgot a line or ad-libbed an unexpected joke). The longest and best laugh of the entire show came toward the end in the combination Pet Shop/Cheese Shop skit with Michael Palin and John Cleese.

The big thing missing was irreverence, not taking themselves too seriously. Things got off to a good start with a funny piece of animation that revealed Graham Chapman's head - which then got kicked like a football (English football). Unfortunately, this was followed up by the still-unfunny-as-it-was-back-on-MPFC llama skit, with John Cleese and the Pythons addressing the audience in Spanish (not French, as in the original skit, if I recall correctly). There were far too many musical numbers, which I found myself fast-forwarding through. Hey, at least that helped cut down on this DVD's long running time!

Monty Python Live (Mostly) is the troupe taking a victory lap as establishment figures - not the take-no-prisoners comedy radicals that they once were. Besides, "Sit on my Face" seems awfully quaint in comparison to the potty-mouth kids of South Park. The end result here would've been much better if they'd allowed themselves to tweak their known skits and come up with something new and surprising, audience expectations be damned.

(On a side note, the booklet accompanying the DVD gives thanks to Tim Brooke-Taylor for allowing use of The Four Yorkshiremen skit but doesn't credit Marty Feldman as co-writer of the skit. It was originally performed on the At Last The 1948 show by Feldman, Brooke-Taylor, Cleese and Chapman).

Monty Python has been in my life since my earliest years, starting around the mid 1970s, when my brothers would play their albums. In fact, by the time I saw "Life of Brian" in the theaters in 1979 (I was 12- snuck into my first R-rated film), I already had most of those albums memorized. Once I bought the "Brian" script as a paperback back at the time, I found myself having half the film memorized by the end of the year.

We in the theater all laughed at the familiar sketches, even those of us who knew them word for word, we sang along at the songs, and we applauded with the London audience. They performed some of the greatest hits, tossed in a couple of surprise sketches, mixed them up with clips from the show, and choreographed musical numbers, some of which were led by Pythons. The dance numbers were the least enjoyable for me.

Fun were the moments when you could see them just trying to make each other laugh. Especially Cleese, who seemed less interested in staying on script (though he did for the most part) than just trying to keep himself and his fellow Pythons amused. Terry Jones seemed the least active, delivering his lines a bit slower than the others. Gilliam and Idle on the other hand seemed ageless. Palin was great as well.

I don't know that I could really put this up there with the other Python films. Hollywood Bowl was superior both in content and performance, and that was inferior to their three proper films, "Grail", "Brian", and "Meaning of Life". This was more of an event than a concert or a "movie". There was a moment or two when I found myself slightly tearing up. The first was the "Universe Song" (during the song and what happens after) and again at the final bow. Seeing them waving goodbye not just to the audience but to Monty Python in general was a bit heartbreaking. It was like saying a last goodbye to a dying sibling.

Thanks for the laughs, gents... and keep looking at the bright side of life!

I really wanted to get tickets to this but they were hugely expensive and very difficult to get hold of also I couldn't attend the 'live' cinema screening of the last night as we were on holiday. For both of these misfortunes I can now in hindsight be very glad.

A re-union after such a long time is always risky and likely to disappoint, just ask many rock bands that tried to re-capture the old magic, and the Pythons pretty much fail in the expected ways. They're old tired-looking men performing material written by bright energetic young men and it shows. In many of the routines they appear to be simply going through the motions, there's no energy or edge to the performances. The sharp comic timing is generally absent and instead there's heavy reliance on the good will of the audience enjoying the familiar favourites.

Eric Idle and his team did put together a cleverly constructed show, with big musical and dance numbers in a Python style to give the Pythons themselves time to change costumes and, presumably, have a little lie down.

Very little of it made me laugh out loud and the bits that did were generally the big-screen inserts showing famous sketches from the TV-era Python, such as Philosopher's Football, and their series of spoofs on the Olympics, the hundred yard dash for people with no sense of direction etc.

It was great that they included Carol Cleveland, the unofficial seventh Python and the only regular female performer in the shows and films, and there are a couple of funny cameos from Professors Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking at the end of one of the few bits that really did still work, Eric Idle's Galaxy Song from the film "The Meaning of Life". The Argument Sketch, the Dead Parrot Sketch and The Cheese Shop Sketch all worked pretty well as did "Nudge Nudge" but aside from that very little of it would have attracted a paying audience if it wasn't part of an established and historic team.

The DVD itself was badly let down by the appalling picture quality; it was often like watching something on YouTube! It was grainy and fuzzy in almost all the close-ups and I wonder if there had in fact been no close-up shots filmed and the close-up was just a computer- enhanced zoom in on an existing wide shot with the usual loss of resolution that this entails? If so then someone from the film production team needed firing.

For die-hard Python fans only, and even then you'd be better off watching "Life Of Brian" or "Holy Grail" again.

it's very hard to go wrong with these guys. they are the funniest comedy group ever! just got back from the live broadcast at my local theater and my only complaint was the sound. the echo was just awful. couldn't catch the lyrics to any of the songs that included more than one voice. wish the whole thing had been subtitled. the good news is that most of the classics are there. I was laughing out loud and clapping along with the rest of the audience. it was especially funny when the cast members messed up or laughed. I can't wait to own the DVD. I'll watch it again and again. hope they can clean up the sound though. MONTY PYTHON IS THE BEST!