Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

Life's a piece of s**t
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
You'll see it's all a show
People laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

If there is anything I will admit to being a die-hard fan of, other than Peanuts, it is Monty Python. I fell in love with the original Flying Circus TV series instantly when my parents rented some episodes of it at Blockbuster back when I was nine. I loved watching it as a kid. It was silly, it was irreverent, plus the fact that I was watching something mature and sophisticated for my age while everyone else at school was still watching cartoons and MTV made me feel kinda special. I have since collected the entire series on DVD, as well as most of the movies and many of the books. My older sister has given me a plethora of Python toys as Christmas and birthday gifts. I am that devoted.

And no, I'm not the kind of fan who annoys his friends by constantly quoting it in public. I'm not THAT devoted.

And since you've been such good little boys and girls during my "Trilogy of Imagination" ...trilogy, I have a little treat for you: this week, we're going to look at a Python movie.

No, not that one.

Yeah, I'm sure Google REALLY loves it when Blogger users put pics of topless women in crash helmets on their sites.

THAT'S the one, Life of Brian. The most controversial of their cinematic efforts.

While promoting Holy Grail in theaters, the Pythons were often asked what their next movie project would be, to which Eric Idle jokingly answered "Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory". He had even written a sketch with Terry Gilliam where Jesus is angry with some carpenters because they hadn't built his cross properly. They didn't do anything with the sketch, but the idea of a Python Bible story intrigued them, so they did a crapton of Biblical research and spent two weeks in Barbados hammering out a movie script.

After examining the Dead Sea Scrolls and life in Biblical times, however, the Pythons couldn't really find anything all that funny about Jesus. So they decided instead to satirize Jesus' followers, more specifically mainstream religion and its holier-than-thou figureheads. The original script featured Brian as Jesus' thirteenth disciple, the one who couldn't attend the Last Supper because his wife was having friends over for dinner, but eventually Brian became just a regular guy in 33 A.D. Judea.

This sadly didn't stop the film from being at the center of many religious protests, led by a lot of church bigwigs who claimed that Brian was intended to be a mockery of Christ himself without even having seen the movie. It was actually banned in several countries and geographic regions for decades--Sweden marketed it as "the film so funny it was banned in Norway". They may have received a sign of times to come when the EMI studio thought the script was too blasphemous and pulled their money out just two days before they were supposed to fly out to Tunisia to start filming.

Fortunately, the Pythons managed to get by...with a little help from their friends.

Former Beatle George Harrison was a good friend of Eric's and wanted to see the movie made, so when he learned about their financial problems he and his business manager founded the Handmade Films production company to provide the movie's £2 million budget.

I saw this film on TV when I was eleven and didn't think too much of the film's message. I'm older now, and having been born and raised in a moderate Southern Baptist family and attending a Unitarian church in a progressive college town in the most sanctimonious state in the Union, it does kinda hit close to home for me.

(DISCLAIMER: One of the problems of analyzing movies in such a format as this is that you don't want to give too much away to those who haven't seen it. Comedies in particular are a minefield; a bad comedy is easy because you can complain about how the jokes aren't funny and how it insults the audience's intelligence, but GOOD comedies...well, there's always the risk that one or two people who haven't seen it will stumble across it and risk me spoiling the jokes for them. For the benefit of those one or two people, we'll be focusing on the plot of this film instead of its humor, while mentioning where the jokes are in this film so that those who HAVE seen it will know what I'm talking about.)

At least he's not a bureaucrat.

Nowhere is this blasphemy allegation proven more wrong than in the very first scene, which sets up an all-too-familiar setting...

The Three Wise Men have followed a star to a manger in Bethlehem, where a Mrs. Cohen (played by director Terry Jones) nearly throws them out before seeing the gold, frankincense and myrrh they want to give her son for Christmas. Despite some confusion over what myrrh is, they bless the child and bestow their offerings to him, but no sooner are they out the door do they realize they've made a mistake, take their gifts back and head to the heavenly-glowing stable next door.

(In a famous debate on British television where Michael Palin and John Cleese defended the film against two Anglican religious authorities, it turned out they'd had a long lunch and were late to the movie, so they missed this first scene. Remember, kids, always finish your homework.)

About thirty years and a bizarre but nicely animated opening title sequence later, we cut to the Sermon on the Mount as given by Admiral Piett.

The boy whose name was Brian has grown up to be this man called Brian (Graham Chapman), who still lives with his mother and resents the oppression his people are suffering at the hands of the occupying Roman Empire. It is a fact proved early on when it is revealed that his father was a centurion and he wasn't quite immaculately conceived, if you get my meaning. This motivates him to sign up with the People's Front of Judea (not to be confused with the Judean People's Front), an anti-Roman resistance movement lead by one of John's, Michael's and Eric Idle's characters each, and also that he's fallen for another member of theirs, a young lady named Judith (played by Sue Jones-Davies, who lifted the ban of this film in a small Welsh town in 2009 by becoming mayor of it).

The People's Front of Judea can be best described as a faction that doesn't really do a lot of resisting. They just sit around and talk a lot of power-to-the-people stuff and about how much better they are than those other resistance groups, especially the Judean People's Front (splitters!). One of them is also fighting for his right to be a woman. Yes, HIS.

"Item four on the agenda, how all the other left-wing organization's mothers wear army boots..."

He meets the PFJ again at his day job selling food to patrons at the local coliseum. His first assignment is to paint an anti-Roman slogan on the front of Pilate's palace. This is one of the best gags in the movie, so I won't spoil it for you, but it ends with "Romans Go Home" written in Latin one hundred times on the palace walls in various font sizes. Suffice to say, he's as good as in.

Soon after, our little revolutionary is going on his first gubernatorial raid, in which the PFJ sneak into the imperial palace and attempt to kidnap Pilate's wife and hold her hostage until Pilate agrees to withdraw all Roman soldiers from Judea. (Well, except for those who contribute to roads, housing, education, public security, health...crap, did I just give away a good joke then? You one or two people forget you read this!) Things don't go exactly according to plan, thanks to the sudden appearance of a rival anti-government faction, and an argument over which of them came up with kidnapping Pilate's wife first has a hockey game breaking out between them leaving Brian the only one still standing when the centurions arrive.

Brian is brought before Pontius Pilate (think Michael Palin in a toga with an Elmer Fudd/Homestar Runner-type speech impediment) while he decide what to do with him. Or he would if he could, err...stop them laughing about...something that comes up when Brian mentions that his father was in the Roman garrisons...err...

REALLY hard to describe this without giving away a lot of the jokes in them. I'm not even sure I should have mentioned the "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene, even if it is crucial to the film's message.

Anyway, Brian manages to escape and runs up the stairs of a very high, unfinished tower to escape the guards chasing after him, but inadvertently runs off the top of it.

And then...this happens:

I am aware that this movie came out not long after the first Star Wars film was released, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Any landing you can walk away from. And never mention again.

After...that, the chase resumes as Brian retreats back to PFJ HQ with a legion of centurions right behind him.

Incidentally, the PFJ are headquartered at the residence of one Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath (played by John Young, who in an earlier scene was about to be stoned to death for blasphemy, but that went wrong, they just...let him go?). The balcony he is hiding in gives way to drop him right in a line of prophets and seers preaching to the masses, one of whom looks like Terry Gilliam in a potential Keith Moon role. In order to keep his cover, he pretends he is one of them, spouting off philosophical nonsense to a crowd of skeptical listeners who keep picking holes in his parables, and only when some centurions pass by is he suddenly struck with inspiration, and only then does this ruse work.

A little too well, actually.

In fact, his listeners are now convinced that he's their new Messiah, and he is forced to get away from them.

While fleeing from the multitudes, Brian loses one of his shoes (sandals?), which his new-found devotees interpret as a sign, thus kicking off a scene which the Pythons themselves have described as "the entire history of religion in two minutes." The only thing I can mention about it without spoilers is that British comic legend Spike Milligan cameos as the only man left behind when the Brianites run off in the same yet now separate directions.

Maybe it's Matthias' identical twin brother, Dingo.

Brian repeatedly tries to tell his new followers that he's not their new Messiah, but his many attempts to talk sense into them are interpreted as blessings or miracles or words of guidance. He finally tells them to, in a less polite choice of words, "copulate off", only for them to ask him how they should do so. They eventually leave him alone, carrying off a heretical naked hermit whose vow of silence was recently broken to be stoned or something, leaving Judith behind.

One passionate night later, Brian awakens stark naked to an even larger crowd of devotees outside his bedroom window.

Insert funny yet satirically relevant scene I can't tell you about here.

Things are no different at PFJ headquarters, where the sick and possessed have lined up to be healed by their new Savior. Reg has even struck a deal with a Mr. Papadopoulus (executive producer Harrison in an uncredited cameo) to let Brian speak at the Mount. Even Judith has caught Brian fever.

This never happened to the other guy.

Right about now, the Romans finally catch up with Brian (took them that long to chase him down?) and take him back to Pilate, who calmly sends him off to be "cwucified".

Pilate, in a festive Passover spirit, addresses the crowd with his friend from Rome whose name I can't mention for fear of giving away another joke, announcing that he will release one prisoner from his crucifixion party, which the crowd takes as an excuse to name as many 'R' names as they can to poke fun at his accent. After failing to get her comrades in the PFJ to get off their lazy asses and do something about it, Judith joins this crowd to call for Brian's release.

Meanwhile, the PFJ finally decide on a unanimous vote to get off their lazy asses and do something about it.

Mean-meanwhile, Brian has just been sent off with the rest of the crucifers...crucifixioners...crucifees...he's going to be crucified.

Not a lot of major jokes to give away in that lot.

"I will cwucify that wascawwy wabbit!"

Brian is eventually strung up on his cross along with 139 other criminals. The PFJ finally arrive...to wish him well on his martyrdom for the cause, and then sing and applaud for him.

The Roman rescue party show up to release him, but when everyone insists that their name is Brian ("I'm Brian and so's my wife!") they take the wrong man down instead.

A sudden appearance by the Judean People's Front's crack suicide squad (introduced in a deleted scene) goes about as well as you'd expect. Wish I could tell you about it.

Judith appears to say farewell after Reg tells her "what he was doing".

Even his own mother shows up to disown him.

So to summarize: Brian is now hanging on a cross, a long, torturous, horrible death awaits him and all avenues of rescue have pretty much left him to rot.

What more perfect time for a merry sing-along?

So that's Life of Brian. And how does it hold up?

Well, in this so-called enlightened age of Fox News pundits, holier-than-thou politicians, and religious types who spend more time in picket lines than in church...pretty well.

The extensive research the Pythons did for this film shows. The biblical look of the film is quite authentic, and the cinematography and Terry Gilliam's production design makes it all the more realistic. Man, it had ALIENS in it and it looked real. In fact, just about the only thing it gets wrong is that everybody in Judea is Caucasian.

Also...blasphemous? HOW?? Jesus appears in this movie twice, just before AND immediately after the opening credits, and he's the only person in the film who is actually played straight. The Pythons casually tiptoe around all references to him; the worst he gets is when Michael Palin's ex-leper calls him a "bloody do-gooder". The film doesn't outright tell you to abandon Christianity and become an agnostic, it's just saying think for yourselves and have some common sense, a message I'd imagine some mainstream religious leaders would have trouble wrapping their heads around. Message aside, it also has some of their funniest material. Those one or two of you who haven't seen this movie will love it.

Since its release, Brian has become a cult classic--not as popular as Holy Grail or as censor-baiting as Meaning of Life, even though you do get a brief glimpse of Chapman's naughty bits at the start of the "we're all individuals" bit, but it has a nice tinge of satire that the other two films lack. The controversy that surrounds it even now only adds to why people like it so much (look up "Not the Nine O'clock News" on YouTube sometime). It's basic Monty Python--humor that's silly, absurdist and at times sophomoric, but at the same time so sophisticated only the stupid amongst the stupid couldn't understand it. I'm quite proud to list this movie as one of my all-time favorites.

And I didn't even mention the best jokes in it, either.

Praise be to Brian, patron saint of satire, who died so that we all shall laugh.

Brazil (1985)

Welcome to part two of our look at Terry Gilliam's



All you latecomers can check my discussion of Time Bandits for a proper intro.
Then come straight back here, and head on over to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen afterward.
Everyone else...<hr> tag.

---

Dear Sid Sheinberg,

When are you going to release my film, 'BRAZIL'?

Terry Gilliam

This was from a full-page ad that Gilliam took out in a 1985 issue of Variety. It was addressed to Universal Pictures head Sid Sheinberg, whose company had obtained the U.S. distribution rights to Gilliam's newest movie Brazil, but were holding off on its release. The studio didn't think that the original ending of Gilliam's cut would test well with audiences and were toying with the idea of re-editing the film to give it a "happily-ever-after" ending to make it more marketable.

Gilliam disagreed with this idea, and for a while Brazil was left in cinematic limbo while the director fought with the studio. In the meantime, Gilliam held several unapproved private screenings of the film to Hollywood critics and to students at a lecture at USC. It managed to impress the Los Angeles Film Critics Association enough to be named Best Film of the Year, and with such praise Universal had no choice but to give in to Gilliam's demands and release it unedited.

The movie finally came out stateside in December of 1985, ten months after it premiered in Europe. Of course it wound up making more money there than it did here, but it's a cult classic now, so who cares.

And it didn't stop Sheinberg from releasing a 94-minute "Love Conquers All" version which actually made it to television.

We'll be looking at the original two-and-a-half-hour cut because a) I don't like watching re-edited movies, and b) I don't care much for Hollywood endings.

The film takes place, as the opening captions dictate, "somewhere in the 20th century", which would probably suggest an alternate timeline in world history, in a city not unlike that in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where everyone has either a British or American accent. The Ministry of Information, the all-knowing, all-seeing body that rules over wherever this movie takes place, rules with an Orwellian fist thanks to its system of charging suspects for their incarceration and the information they interrogate them for.

It's a system which values efficiency, and little else...especially not building safety codes. You see many many ducts and pipes coming out of the walls and the ceilings of everywhere. It's very claustrophobic and I'm not even sure most of them are even for heating and AC. But they don't care. The movie even starts with a commercial advertising new designer ducts at your local Central Services showroom.

Oh yeah, and there's the classic 1984 tactic of setting off random explosions in public places from time to time so as to make you think there are terrorists about.

"Happy Christmas, everyone! ...oh, and OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA."

Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a white-collar employee working for the Ministry. Sam is a low-level government worker, no wife, no girlfriend, he's henpecked by his mother (Katherine Helmond), an overbearing woman who along with her friends is seriously addicted to plastic surgery. At his job, he is also prone to daydreaming that he is a winged knight sailing through the skies after a beautiful maiden in the clouds.

Truly a prime candidate for the Anti-Sex League.

And that he is also David Bowie.

On this particular day, Sam is assigned by his boss, whom Gilliam has reverently named Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm) to look into a clerical error where a dead fly jammed in the printer has caused a typo on a government document regarding a Mr. Harry Tuttle, a rogue element, and the subsequent wrongful arrest of a Mr. Archibald Buttle, loving husband and father of two. Apparently they'd overcharged Mr. Buttle for what little info they got out of him, and Sam is told to rectify it as well as deliver a refund check to his grieving widow (apparently Buttle's heart condition never turned up on Tuttle's papers).

Meanwhile, the Buttles' upstairs neighbor Jill (Kim Griest) is trying to get to the bottom of this whole mix-up in hopes of discovering what happened to Mr. Buttle, but the higher-ups at the Ministry refuse to cooperate and have even branded her as an enemy of the state for trying to bring their administrative error to light. And, as it happens, she looks just like the girl in Sam's recurring daydreams.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you sign can and will be deducted from your bank account in a court of law."

Also, on one night where the heating system in his apartment breaks down, Sam is unexpectedly visited by the REAL Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro), a renegade central heating repair guy who left the government payroll a while back because he couldn't stand the paperwork. Unfortunately, his presence makes enemies of two Central Services maintenance guys (played by Bob Hoskins and Derrick O'Connor) who rip out all of Sam's ductwork and then kick him out of his flat so they can "fix it."

Throughout, Sam's recurring dreams start turning Freudian as he now has to save his dream-Jill from baby-faced ghouls, monsters who look very much like Mr. Kurtzmann and Mrs. Buttle and her children, and a ferocious samurai warrior sitting atop a pile of rubble all lit up in neon.

And that's about the first two-thirds of the film right there.

Also, former Time Bandit Jack Purvis appears as a rival plastic surgeon to Jim Broadbent at one of Sam's mother's fancy parties. Thought I'd mention that for continuity's sake.

Holy crap. ...is that a shoe on her head?

Using his new-found government connections--his best friend Jack (recurring Python alumnus Michael Palin) and his mother's ties to Deputy Minister Jeremiah Helpmann (Peter Vaughan), a leader who talks a lot of nonsense, most of it in cricket metaphors--Sam finally gets to meet the appropriately freaked out Jill just as she is staring down several gun barrels hoisted by many heavily-armed policemen. What follows is a chase scene where Sam tries to confess to Jill and Jill tries to lose him while driving a truck through a construction site and finally escapes through a fancy department store during a conveniently-timed "terrorist attack."

He sneaks back into the Ministry to tamper with some records to have Jill declared legally dead and call off the storm troopers, and after that he finds her again and the two of them enjoy a passionate night of romance with Jill strangely wearing a wig making her look like the damsel in distress of his fantasies.

The next morning Sam and Jill are just about to make plans for Hate Week when they are rudely awakened by the sound of policemen barging in and surrounding them with machine guns.

At least Winston and Julia both got to live.

Read the book.

"I never wanted to be a bureaucrat anyway. I wanted to be a lumberjack..."

Sam is charged with treason for abusing his position and is strapped to a chair inside of a nuclear cooling tower where his old (as in, ex-) friend Jack wears a baby doll mask from his dreams and is about to perform a very surgical interrogation. (Jill is revealed to have been shot while resisting arrest.) Suddenly a gaping hole appears in Jack's brain as Tuttle reappears with some similarly-dressed gentlemen to rescue Sam and blow up the Ministry. Guns blaze, more things explode, and we even get a nice Battleship Potemkin reference.

From this point on, things get very stream-of-consciousness. Tuttle disappears in a stream of papers, Sam arrives at a funeral for one of his mother's friends (who had died of complications from complications from complications from her latest facelift) and finds that his mom looks eerily like Jill and has become a cougar, he falls into the casket and runs through a world lifted from his daydreams with monsters and soldiers and things chasing after him, next thing he knows he's in a trailer truck with the very-much-alive-and-kicking Jill in the driver's seat. And so the two of them drive out of the city and off into the countryside, where they settle down together and live happily ever--

Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!

Oh. Err, okay. So it turns out that last bit was all in Sam's head the whole time. He's dreaming again. Jack and Mr. Helpmann observe, fear they've lost him as they exit the room and leave him alone with his thoughts, humming the title song/recurring motif.

Damn. So Big Brother wins. Again.

Or...maybe Sam does. Somehow.

Well, the audience wins, anyway, because Brazil is a freaking EXTRAVAGANZA. Screw its two-and-a-half hour running time, I loved it.

I don't see why Universal felt cutting the ending would make it a better film. It's about a guy who daydreams a lot. So what, the daydreams suddenly become real? His bosses and his mom and everything else made his life such a living hell that the fates decide to cut him a break? I haven't seen the "Love Conquers All" version, but I'd hardly think a boy-gets-the-girl conclusion would mesh well with the whole escapism theme. Besides, George Orwell's novel didn't have a happy ending either, and IT worked.

Also, typical of Gilliam's efforts, it is SPECTACULAR to look at, probably even more so than Time Bandits. A lot is made of the use of perspective in the camera work which makes for eye-popping cinematography, whereas the art design is a very unique blend of futuristic technology and retro film noir elements--I particularly liked the Ministry of Information interiors that resemble a 1940s newspaper office and the use of giant magnifying lenses and typewriter keyboards as a makeshift desktop computer.

AND its vision of modern society is frighteningly prophetic. Think about it--a consumerist people that's fanatically obsessed with money, credit ratings, and appearances, buried up to their eyebrows in red tape, plagued by invisible "terrorists" who may or may not exist, concerned with efficiency to the exclusion of most everything else including conscience or craftsmanship, and they'd never in a million years admit that they're wrong.

Not bad for a guy who admits he's never even READ 1984.

A pictoral metaphor two reviews in a row. You know I spoil you people.

Time Bandits (1981)

Terry Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1940 and went to the Occidental College in Los Angeles where he got a degree in political science, but spent most of his time writing and making illustrations for campus magazines. His early inspirations included Mad magazine, which at the time was edited by a man named Harvey Kurtzmann; in fact, one of his early after-college jobs was for Kurtzmann's new humor magazine Help!, where it was during a photographic comic strip shoot that he met and first worked with famous British comedian John Cleese. Then in the late sixties, he and his family moved to England and took British citizenship, and through Cleese's connections he got a job at the BBC, as an animator on the subversive children's series Do Not Adjust Your Set.

After Do Not Adjust Your Set ended, Gilliam and three of the show's cast members collaborated with Cleese and one of his comic cohorts to produce an adult sketch comedy series.

And thus was born:

Gilliam is best known as the off-camera member of the Monty Python troupe. His main contribution to the Flying Circus was more behind-the-scenes - he made the little cut-out animations that linked the live-action sketches together. As the series went on, he eventually started appearing more and more on stage and started moving away from making cartoons, and by the time he made his directorial debut alongside Terry Jones with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he had caught the directing bug. His first solo gig as director was the 1977 cult movie Jabberwocky, which wasn't very well received by critics and audiences but was the first of a number of movies that would go on to achieve cult status.

For the next few updates we will look at a specific trifecta in his filmography unofficially refereed to as

Nice, huh? Made it myself.

Three Terry Gilliam movies made throughout the 1980s that examine the world of imagination through the eyes of three different people.

TIME BANDITS
through the eyes of a child.

BRAZIL
through the eyes of a white-collar worker.

And
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
through the eyes of an old man.

Come with me now to a three-ring circus of fantasy, escapism, and eye-popping cinematography. Plus, if you're all real good, I'll give you a treat when we're done.

---

All the dreams you've ever had...and not just the good ones...

The 1980s were a golden age for sci-fi/fantasy movies. Before hobbits, teenage wizards and CG effects dominated the market, you had movies like Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Tron, The Neverending Story, Gremlins, Ghostbusters one AND two, the original Indiana Jones and Conan the Barbarian movies, two of the first three Star Wars films, Blade Runner--groundbreaking films that set benchmarks for the genre and have withstood the tests of time, harsh critics and varying degrees of success at the box office to become the cult classics we know and obsess over on the Internet today.

And who better to get a piece of the action than Monty Python's in-house animator?

Produced by ex-Beatle George Harrison's movie company Handmade Films, the people who brought you Life of Brian, Nuns on the Run and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Gilliam's third ever film Time Bandits was his attempt to make a whimsical, family-friendly fantasy movie in hopes of persuading the people at Handmade to get a little film he had written titled Brazil made. He hadn't done a film in two years when shooting began, and the only studio that would distribute it was a mid-major that hadn't had a hit in a long time, so he wasn't certain it'd sell twell, but it went on to become his most successful film in America and went on to set the tone for his future films.

The film stars a young child named Kevin (young Craig Warnock), a very imaginative boy who is very fascinated with history, who lives with his parents who are more obsessed with sitting on their plastic-wrapped furniture watching corny prime time game shows, talking about fancy high-tech appliances and yelling at Kevin for making too much noise.

That night after he goes to sleep, a white knight on horseback crashes through his closet door and runs through a sylvan glen that used to be his bedroom wall.

It turns out he dreamed this.

Not much comes from this scene, as it is never brought up again for the rest of the movie.

The next night, armed with a camera, a satchel and a flashlight, Kevin goes to bed awaiting the next strange thing coming through his bedroom.

And something does.

It turns out to be six small men carrying a strange map and looking for a way out of his bedroom.

These small men are revealed to be former employees for the Supreme Being (or God or whoever you want) hired to help keep Creation running. Feeling unappreciated, they decided to steal a map of the time-space continuum and use it to travel through time holes, burgling people along the way. I can't really tell who's who amongst our merry men, but I CAN tell you that their self-appointed leader is played by notable midget actor David Rappaport, one of them is Kenny Baker, who is best known to us all as the lovable R2-D2, and another of them is Jack Purvis, of whom we'll be seeing quite a bit throughout this trilogy.

Their first stop is the Battle of Castiglione in 1796, where we meet the great French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte (Ian Holm), who is, true to the stereotype, short, but not only does he not feel insecure about it, but he's also obsessed with them. Especially when they're hitting each other with things. Naturally, he likes the bandits so much he makes them all generals.

Ehh, those other two guys are probably just compensating for something.

Next they travel to medieval England, where they meet Robin Hood and his band of--

Wait...isn't Robin Hood a fictional character?

Ehh, he's played by John Cleese, so who cares.

(Speaking of fellow Pythons, look for co-screenwriter Michael Palin appearing with Shelley Duvall a couple of times as an ill-fated couple the bandits keep running into.)

"You call me 'Little John', I'll smash yer face in."

Throughout all this, they are constantly monitored by a being known only as Evil (played by David Warner, whom you may remember was all three baddies from Tron) and his cadre of plastic-wrapped minions. Evil has harsh criticisms for the Supreme Being's designs for the universe ("Forty-three species of parrot! NIPPLES FOR MEN! SLUGS!!") and feels he would run things much better if he and his more technologically-minded...mind were put in charge. So he tricks one of the bandits to suggest they travel to his lair at the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness within the Time of Legends, where the Most Fabulous Object in the World exists, so he can steal the map and rewrite the universe to his whims.

Yeah. Fortress of Ultimate Darkness. Nothing can happen to them there, right? And hey, the Most Fabulous Object in the World. I'd say that's worth a trip.

"Wait till they get a load of ME."

Kevin gets separated from his companions and visits ancient Greece, coincidentally his favorite period in history. He arrives in time to save the life of King Agamemnon (played by Connery...Sean Connery) and the two of them hit it off really well. The king even decides to adopt him and throws a huge party to celebrate...which the bandits crash to rob him and take Kevin back with them.

Kevin's had so much fun in ancient Greece that the boat ride he and his friends have wound up on isn't doing much to lighten his now-sour mood.

Neither is the fact that the boat they're on turns out to be the Titanic.

"So, Kevin, where did you go over summer vacation?"

Right about now, Evil takes it upon himself to jump start the plot and send them through a hole straight to the Time of Legends.

From this point, things get kinda surreal.

*ahem*

They hijack a ship manned by Peter Vaughan dressed like an ogre and his wife from Who's The Boss, hitch a ride on a giant's head and break a giant pane of glass to reach the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, where Evil uses illusions of a brand-new kitchen set and Kevin's parents as his "Most Fabulous Object in the World" ploy to trap them and run off with the map. Kevin and company escape and steal the map back, one of the bandits gets turned into a pig, another one of them dies, and the other ones look for time holes and come back with a space rocket, a tank, some knights, some cowboys and some archers, none of which turn out to be very effective against Evil, but before HE can launch an attack of his own, he suddenly turns into stone and...explodes.

I don't think the description in the previous paragraph does that whole chain of events justice. You're gonna have to watch it for yourself to see how crazy it is.

"It's only a model."
"Shh!"

Then the Supreme Being shows up in the form of Ralph Richardson in a fancy suit. He recovers the map, changes everything back to normal, rehires the bandits and orders them to clean up the mess, particularly all the chunks of concentrated Evil lying around. They leave Kevin behind wondering why they're leaving him behind, with a smoldering chunk of David Warner they forgot to pick up .

Then Kevin wakes up in his bedroom to find it filled with smoke and some firemen (one of whom looks very much like Agamemnon) breaking his door down to rescue him. Seems his house caught on fire while he was asleep and his parents were too concerned with saving their appliances to see to the safety of their offspring.

Kevin finds out he still has the Polaroids from his adventures in ancient Greece, as well as the one with his midget friends holding up the map.

It turns out the source of the fire was a bit of concentrated Evil in their toaster oven. Despite Kevin's warning, his parents touch it and...explode.

Yes. This actually happens.

Then the firemen just...ride off.

And then...the credits roll.

There's your metaphor: finding a turd in your fancy-schmancy newfangled toaster oven.

Time Bandits has one of the most double-u-tee-eff endings I've ever seen in a movie. Kevin's parents are obviously an argument against modern materialism, and you could say they get what they deserve in a sense, but it kinda comes right out of nowhere, and with everything else that happens, it gets a tad confusing. It's sort of implied that Kevin could probably go looking for a time hole and have his own adventures, now that he doesn't have a materialistically-grounded Mom and Dad holding him back, but it's laid out so loosely that it's hard to understand what's going on if you're watching it for the first time.

That's really the only major complaint that I have, because other than that, the movie's pretty good. The dialogue is very witty, the visuals and special effects are breathtaking, and the characters are very energetic and rambunctious. Some of it might be a little scary for the more sheltered, impressionable kids, but everyone else should have a ball.

One down, two to go...

Hey, look..."Mini" Python's Flying Circus! Heh heh...sorry.

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Once upon a time...or maybe twice...there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland.

Eighty thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay...or lie. I'm not too sure.

From the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1963 would emerge a quartet which would forever change the face of popular music.

What could be said about the Beatles that hasn't already been said millions of times by millions of people in the past few decades? Apart from "about time iTunes put their music up in their online store"? Most influential rock band of all time, put out some of the best music ever recorded, sold millions of records, at least three of them went on to successful solo careers after their breakup in 1970, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

With a band as successful as the Fab Four, it seemed only natural that they would make a transition into the motion pictures...and they did, with the 1964 Richard Lester film A Hard Day's Night, regarded by moviegoers all over as one of the greatest rock 'n' roll films of all time. This was followed up one year later with Help!, which I can best describe as A Hard Day's Night with a plot...and also in color. The Beatles weren't too pleased with Help!, and coupled with the poor reception of their 1967 made-for-TV effort Magical Mystery Tour, they were kind of turned off on the whole starring-in-movies thing.

So perhaps it came as a great relief to them that their fourth film would be a little more...animated.

Yellow Submarine was NOT the Beatles' first foray into animation. That honor would go to a 39-episode Saturday morning cartoon series of their namesake produced in 1965 by British animation studio TVC. In it, the band traveled the world, played gigs and got into scrapes not uncommon for any 1960s TV show. The actual Beatles hated it. So when the time came to make this film, TVC threw out their original art and character designs and hired artist Heinz Edelmann to give the movie its trademark psychedelic pop art feel. George Dunning, who had produced the TV series, was chosen to direct.

As for the band themselves, they only agreed to the film as a means of finishing out their movie deal with United Artists, and thus their contribution was minimal. They don't voice themselves, but they did contribute four original songs to the soundtrack--"All Together Now", "Only a Northern Song", "Hey Bulldog" and "It's All Too Much". However, they later saw a draft copy of the finished product and were so impressed by it that they chose to appear as themselves in a live-action cameo at the end of the movie.

The film was remastered and re-released in 1999 for the first time on DVD (I remember giving my sister a VHS copy for Christmas that year) but since then it's gone out of print and hasn't seen another DVD release since. In that time, Robert Zemeckis and Disney had threatened to remake the film with ghastly 3-D motion capture animation and release it in time for the London Olympics next year; luckily those plans were torpedoed by the poor performance of his all-zombie Christmas Carol and the CATASTROPHIC reception of his adaptation of Berkeley Breathed's Mars Needs Moms.

Welcome to Pepperland, a paradise of green pastures and blue skies eighty thousand leagues under the sea, where the air is crisp, the scenery is more colorful than normal, and the music is always playing to the delight of its denizens. Everything's happy and peaceful and love and peace are in the air and all the rest of it. It's also the home of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band--the original one, mind you. Don't know who those other guys were...posers.

We're Sgt. Pepper's. Yes, we're the real Sgt. Pepper's. All you other Sgt. Pepper's' are just imitating.

Meanwhile, far out on the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of Pepperland live some contemptible creatures known as Blue Meanies, who hate music and color and all things nice and won't even answer in the affirmative. No really, they answer every question with "no", even when in the affirmative. They have an army, led by the Chief Blue Meanie, a blue fuzzy thing with rabbit ears and a psychotic demeanor, and his subordinate Max. And they have clowns;

fat men dressed in fezzes who can eat things with their stomachs;

a flying glove;

a squadron of cat-like butterfly stompers;

and some rather tall blokes who like to drop giant green apples on things.

And they're about to launch an invasion. In fact, they just have. Trapping the house band in a giant bubble, they set about laying waste to Pepperland, destroying the landscape, immobilizing civilians, setting off explosions and...dropping giant green apples on things. The Lord Mayor of Pepperland, who only notices that they're under attack when three members of his quartet are suddenly silenced, takes Old Fred (or Young Fred, whichever you like) the sea captain atop an Aztec-like structure where atop sits the titular vessel, and sends him off to points unknown to get help. The submarine takes off just before the Mayor has some giant green apples dropped on him.

After sailing through the title song and opening credits, the submarine finally comes out in Liverpool, England, where after an melancholy inner-city animation sequence to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby", it finds none other than Ringo Starr of the fabulous Beatles, who gets a little nervous as the sub follows him all the way to his house. After docking, Fred makes his situation known to him through the front door via incoherent babbling about submarines and explosions and finishing on Blue Meanies, and Ringo lets him inside their psychedelic TARDIS/cartoon cliche endless hall of doors of a house to gather his friends.

A Frankenstein's monster awakens and drinks a steaming potion to turn itself into John.

George is sitting in a Eastern-style meditation room...but then drives up to Fred and the others from behind.

Paul emerges fresh from an out-of-shot Mozart concert in one of their house's many rooms.

So with all of the Beatles on board, literally and metaphorically, the submarine takes off with the aid of a certain song played to death by those annoying Sprint commercials en route to Pepperland.

Before they get there, however, they must embark on a periolous journey through the many many seas that lie before them. Besides, this is a musical film and we need something to play Beatles songs to.

THE SEA OF TIME

This particular part of the...well, I know there's no water, but let's call it an ocean anyway because I can't imagine a submarine sailing through anything else has the power to alter the passage of time for anyone that passes through it which could be dangerous as there is the risk of death or pre-life and THEN death. Old Fred and the Beatles suddenly become younger (Ringo cries for his mother, very cute) and then age just as rapidly, but a simple sing-song of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and they make it through the area with their present ages.

THE SEA OF SCIENCE

Nothing much happens here--just a set piece for "Only a Northern Song". Most psychedelic moment of the film, though, if you ask me.

THE SEA OF MONSTERS

Whilst observing and occasionally fighting off the local wildlife, and giving the audience some quick visual gags in the process, Ringo accidentally pushes a button which ejects him from the submarine. Fred and the remaining band members must fight off a vacuum monster, a creature with boxing gloves and a swarm of beings made to look like Native Americans to save him.

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice some instruments falling out of the bottom of the sub while the lads are fighting off the boxing monster (plot point), as well as a banner coming out the back with THE ROLLING STONES written on it (not important, just worth mentioning).

The vacuum dude eventually sucks up the submarine, then the background, and then itself, which segues into

THE SEA OF NOTHING

Pretty self-explanatory, this one. Just...nothing. Emptiness. Blankness. Absence of content. Not a good place for the submarine's motor to break down.

Luckily the band finds a local who might help fix it--Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., a little green guy who talks in rhyming couplets and looks a little like a Blue Meanie except for the fact that he's...well, green. And quite polite as well. He's the "Nowhere Man" who spends all day sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Hey, that reminds me of a song.

A song that hurts Jeremy's feeling a little afterward, so Ringo makes up for it by inviting him to join them on the sub.

THE SEA OF HEADS

(also known as the Foothills of the Headlands)

When the sub breaks down again after just having left the Sea of Nothing, Jeremy's attempts to fix it with chewing gum sends it flying off to points unknown, leaving him and the Beatles stranded. As they walk around, John manages to amuse himself with one head that shows pictures of rotoscoped dancing girls and plays "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Love that song.

Some friendly heads with allergies sneeze them in the general direction of

THE SEA OF HOLES

Another self-explanatory one. Big black dots you can fall through as far as the eye can see, one of which will lead them to the Sea of Green, and from there it's a straight shot to Pepperland. John says that this place reminds him of Blackburn, Lancashire. Jeremy notes that now they know how many it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Ringo pockets one of the holes ("I've got a hole in my pocket") while a random Blue Meanie rummaging though the holes pockets Jeremy.

Ringo finds the Sea of Green by stepping on a green hole, and just like that, they've arrived in Pepperland. Ahead of the submarine by a minute or two, even, but let's not deny it a grand entrance.

THE SEA OF...oh wait, this is Pepperland, we've arrived, sorry

It seems Pepperland has fallen into further decay while Fred was gone. The crowd just stands there totally lifeless, everything is drained of color, Blue Meanies are running around bullying people...sounds like military school without the gun practice. After the Lord Mayor revived with a bit of singing and pulled out of the green apple pile, he notices that the help Fred has brought in bears a striking resemblance to the Lonely Hearts Club Band--hey! The could impersonate them and play the music to rally the populace to revolt!

Only one problem--they lost all their instruments in the Sea of Monsters (go back and watch it again--seriously, blink and you'd miss it) and they'll have to infiltrate the Meanie forces to get to the gazebo where they've stashed every music-making device in Pepperland!

Which they do.

Just another case of The Man trying to keep us down.

The next day, after running away from Meanies, armed with contraband musical ammunition and dressed as the locals' hometown favorites, the Beatles launch the first wave of their campaign to take back Pepperland--a performance of the intro track of their Sgt. Pepper's album--not only do they look just like them, but they also know their songs, what are the odds of that?--which awakens the people to take their freedoms back from the blue menace.

The Meanies retaliate by sending in their flying glove, which momentarily worries the populace, but a defiant John takes him on mano-a-mano (pun intended, Spanish speakers) and with the power of the sudden physical materialization of his words as he sings "All You Need is Love", makes a quick job of him. And with the music bringing the color back to the flora and fauna of Pepperland and the audience digging the vibes, the Meanies are sent packing.

Using Ringo's souvenir from the Sea of Holes, the Beatles dissipate the bubble thing silencing the Lonely Hearts Club Band and together, with the help of a old-timey piano, they confound the Meanies' four-headed bulldog into submission while singing "Hey Bulldog" in a musical moment which was never seen in America until the 1999 remastering.

"What is it?"
"I don't know. Some kind of toilet?"
"Maybe if we bark at it, it'll go away."

Ringo finds and frees Jeremy, and raring to join in the fight he stumbles upon the Chief Blue Meanie, distressed at the sight of his once-menacing forces running away in droves and desperate to get something out of this battle. He attempts to kill Jeremy, but as a last request Jeremy recites some poetry which has the power to sprout roses all over the Meanie's body, sending him away too.

Floral print? I'd thought even a Blue Meanie would have more fashion sense than that.

With the Pepperlanders victorious and the Meanies contemplating moving to Argentina, John shows that they are gracious in victory by inviting the Meanies to join them in their never-ending reverie. Max says no--whether he's in the affirmative or the negative is uncertain--but the Chief Blue Meanie corrects him and accepts his oral peace accord as he's finally seen the error of his authoritarian buzz-killing ways and now wants to join his enemies in an act of peaceful co-existence. Either that or it's a side effect of the roses growing out of his torso, I dunno. Either way, we get a nice and trippy ending montage to the tune of "It's All Too Much" as Meanie and Pepperlander unite in a glorious cacophany of peace and love and music and pop art and stuff like that.

Then the actual flesh-and-blood Beatles appear on screen and lead us all in a final reprise of "All Together Now" to ward off the newer and Bluer Meanies that the actual flesh-and-blood John sees approaching the theater. And there's your movie.

You say you want a revolution.

Basic? Yes. Trippy? Mos def. But the art design is unique, the animation is pretty good and it contains some of the best Beatles songs in their catalog (and this was pre-White Album) as well as a fantastic background score by musical director George Martin. The dialogue is pretty fun too--witticisms, musical references, non sequiturs, the occasional pun, and just watching the Beatles bounce lines off each other and everyone else makes it that much more enjoyable. It also has a very anti-establishment message--the oppressive Blue Meanies are described as simply "all the bad people in the world", so they could represent practically anyone--policemen, politicians, Nazis maybe ("Are you bluish? You don't look bluish"), some of them even smoke cigars and drink martinis, so they could represent Wall Street as far as I'd know.

Interpretations and debates of possible influences aside, Yellow Submarine easily ranks right up there as one of the most fun experiences you could ever have watching a movie. It's sad that it hasn't been reissued on DVD since the one in 1999, partly I assume because of the bankruptcy woes of United Artists' parent company MGM, so it's pretty difficult to find a copy today. Maybe if Zemeckis' remake hadn't been cancelled it would have driven up demand, but them's the breaks I'm afraid. It's easily one of the best animated films ever made, at least among the ones I've seen, and fans of the Beatles and/or classic animated movies will love it.

This is a free concert from now on...