Some things I liked some I did not.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

"....if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate!" This is one of my favorite comedies! It took numerous viewings for me to love it but it was worth it!The movie follows the skit team going through the stages of life to try to find the meaning of life. So they go through birth, religious belief, war, sex ed, Catholic education, aging, gluttony, and other various topics. I have 2 main favorite scenes: The aforementioned "Every Sperm Is Sacred" scene, in which a Catholic man must give up his numerous kids for experiments since he did not use protection. My other is the Mr. Creosote segment, where an extremely obese man orders all of the food on the menu in a restaurant. That's all I will say about that. Just know from my experience that guys love the segment and girls TEND to not like it. The movie is stupid but what else would you expect from Monty Python? The Meaning of Life may offend, but it's so silly that you won't really care if you have my experience. "And may God strike me down otherwise!"

This is one of the best comedies I have ever seen. It's probably in my Top 10, if not Top 5. While I (and most other people) consider "Monty Python And The Holy Grail" to be the best Monty Python movie, this is still amazing. What's interesting is that since it's an anthology movie, I've actually seen bits and pieces of it over the years. I already saw about 38 minutes of it before. It's of course worth it to see the whole thing.It seems as though everything is unrelated, but it really does make a lot more sense at the end. We even get a nice happy ending with everything resolved and guess what? They actually tell you the meaning of life at the end! Well, at least what they think it is. It really isn't a mean spirited movie or anything. I don't, however, recall the original Monty Python show being this graphic or obscene. You can just get away with a lot more in movies. I think my favorite segment would probably be the bit with Mr. Caruso. Yes, it's disgusting, but it's hilarious. I also love the lengthy opening bit as that honestly probably works better as action than comedy. It's extremely unpredictable, yet it does form somewhat of a coherent narrative. Among all of their films, this is the one that seemed the most like their show. ****

Taking their final bow as a team with this being their final collaborative film project, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life finally hit cinema theaters back in 1983. Dispensing with the the more conventional narrative that they utilized with their previous two movies, they opted for the sketch format that they had become most renowned for with their classic TV series. Given the foreseeable hysteria that had met them with the controversy surrounding their magnum opus, Life of Brian; it might have felt like something of a relief that their last offering was not met with same outraged devour. That's not say there Isn't anything contentious or potentially offensive however as they up the bad taste and vulgarity factor to inspired effect. From challenging Roman Catholic Dogma with their elaborate, showstopping Every Sperm is Sacred musical routine to John Cleese playing a public schoolmaster teaching sexual education to is pupils by having sexual intercourse with his wife in front of them; it has moments of perverse brilliance. Team member Michael Palin himself noted that that it's increased budget of $9 million meant they could afford to be more "daring and dark". Accompanied by Terry Gilliam's short film, The Crimsons Permanent Assurance, a typically surreal prelude to what's to come. Showcasing his aesthetically distinctive style that show was utilized to greater prominence with his first solo directorial work; Time Bandits, and later with 1985's; Brazil. Concerning a group of elderly office clerks who work in a a small accounting firm, they figuratively throw off the shackles of their employment by rebelling against their corporate bosses. Becoming pirates they turn their office building in to one big ship, and pillage financial areas. Gilliam's short would be amusingly woven in to the fabric of the subsequent film due to a interruption, and a voice over apologizing for it "due to an attack by the supporting feature."Director Terry Jones who took sole directorial duties as he did with Life of Brian does a bang up job, and the film does have something of an overall more polished feel than the last two films, largely due to it's larger budget. He still never the less displays his considerable prowess and no more so in the aforementioned musical number. However further musical moments that include Eric Idle's quirky and colourful rendition of The Galaxy Song, which examines the humbling nature of the vastness of the Universe and our relative insignificance is truly inspired. It is complimented by visually magnificent high-tech computer generated sequence, that while dated now would have impressed movie-going audience back then. Arguably most memorable however and for it's vomit inducing bad taste is the sketch entitled "The Autumn of Our Years", which introduces the glutinous and grotesquely overweight Mr. Creosote as portrayed by Jones. A vile, repulsive character who disgustingly stuffs his face in a restaurant (where he is served by John Cleese's caricatured french waiter) to such an extreme that it culminates with a memorable gross out punchline of eye-popping proportions. Amusingly when the The Meaning of Life won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, he joked that it might have been because Orson Welles, who was on the judging panel, identified with Mr. Creosote. Where it fails to completely hang together as a cohesive whole is it suffers although not frequently from self indulgence. It's at times strange for the sake of being strange to some degree, and while it does work at times it results in a scene involving two insanely bizarre characters played by Jones and fellow team member, Graham Chapman in a segment called "Find the Fish". Also the sketch format, which worked well for myself personally as an enthusiastic Python fan would not had the same appeal for a general mainstream audience. With the film just taking under $15 million at the box office as opposed to Life of Brian's $20 million that strikes me as likely being the case. And given that one member of the team stated that the main theme and concept of the film was so they could weave together a series of unrelated sketches, you feel as if they weren't quite as committed to their endeavour and the impetus behind the movie was a shallow attempt to profit off of their success. Even so, looking at the end product as it stands, they still invested much creative effort even if it doesn't quite reaching the dizzying heights their first two proper movies. (And Now For Something Completely Different was nothing more than a collection of their sketches from the TV series which were re-shot for American film audiences in an attempt to introduce their brand of comedy to the U.S. market) Inventive and more polished due to less financial constraints which still doesn't guarantee high quality, it's an outing that I still enjoy revisiting when I get the chance, and still gains a stamp of approval from dedicated fans

From conception to birth, from death to eternity, life is explored through its many meanings. This series of vignettes attacks convention from the Catholic stance on birth control (which leads to a huge musical number straight out of "Oliver!"), the grotesque presence of an enormously fat man who can't hold down his dinner(s) in an elegant restaurant, the accidental poisoning of dinner guests at a country dinner party, and the entrance into heaven where every day is Christmas. These are for me the highlights, other segments on child birth and a man being executed having his choice of methods and choosing being chased by topless buxom women, not being so funny. It starts off with a prelude with tired bookkeepers taking over their office building and turning into pirates; Slightly amusing, but no classic.But when a pregnant woman drops her baby out simply while doing dishes and her husband tells their many children that they are being sold into slavery, the offbeat and deliciously bad taste begins with his breaking into "Every Sperm is Sacred", spoofing the big musical numbers in the 1968 Best Picture "Oliver!". "God looks down on those who treat their semen with more care" is one of the lyrics, and you know that the film is not going to be sensitive to those overrated politically correct standards. If you have a queasy stomach, you might want to turn away when the fat man enters the restaurant because this is not an easy sequence to take. You'll thank God that the film was not filmed in "Smell-o-Vision" in this sequence.Then there's the delightfully droll sequence of death visiting the country home of a dotty housewife who served her guests canned salmon moose resulting in all of their deaths including one guest who didn't EAT the salmon. This is one of those bits of comedy that when you watch it over and over, you'll start quoting the movie line for line. Their deaths are quick and painless and they head into heaven in their own automobiles where all the characters from the past (including those who didn't die in earlier sequences and were played by some of the same actors) greet them. It wraps up this well saturated cherry of a sweet little slap into the face of life very nicely, and even if on video, you find yourself fast-forwarding through some of the weaker segments, there will be enough to keep this in your cineramic comedy memory.