The Monty Python team are the Pink Floyd of comedy; that is to say, they began brilliantly, shattering paradigms, but gradually subsided into lumbering, stodgy self-parody. (In the Floyd's case, compare and contrast the brilliantly fresh and visionary "See Emily Play" with the depressingly self-regarding millionaire's stadium plod-rock of "Comfortably Numb".)
The trouble is, many people follow rock bands and comedy teams as blindly as they follow political parties, once their basic loyalties have been established. So it is with the Floyd and the Pythons. Two or three Pythons only have to show up in a film or TV show for unthinking accolades to be heaped on it, regardless of whether, viewed objectively, it is any good or not. The Floyd/Pythons continue to bathe in the referred glory of their earlier, genuine achievements. (In any case, Jones and Idle are the only strong Python presences in the film; Palin (the smuggest of superannuated satirists) must have sleep-walked through his exiguous, undemanding role as The Sun, while it must have taken about thirty seconds for Cleese to complete his economy-size cameo.)
As an adaptation of the children's classic, Terry Jones's film is a travesty. Taken on its own terms, it is intermittently entertaining, although it loses focus and becomes excessively silly once Toad has escaped from gaol.
I think the film must be viewed in the context of the time it was made. John Major's faltering Conservative regime still just about held sway in Britain in 1995-6 (the time of the film's production), and the Labour Party had been out of power since 1979. The grasping, treacherous, materialistic weasels - who resemble the Blue Meanies from "Yellow Submarine" - are clearly a satire on the greedy entrepreneurs who had taken centre-stage in British public life after the accession of Margaret Thatcher. (We were still naive enough then to hope that Tony Blair's New Labour would rescue us from the weasels, so to speak. But New Labour were just the same old weasels in disguise.)
Steve Coogan and Nicol Williamson play their roles with more conviction than the film strictly deserves, while the Pythons simply trade on their fans' brand-loyalty. Pretty Julia Sawalha is fetching as the gaolkeeper's daughter
The trouble is, many people follow rock bands and comedy teams as blindly as they follow political parties, once their basic loyalties have been established. So it is with the Floyd and the Pythons. Two or three Pythons only have to show up in a film or TV show for unthinking accolades to be heaped on it, regardless of whether, viewed objectively, it is any good or not. The Floyd/Pythons continue to bathe in the referred glory of their earlier, genuine achievements. (In any case, Jones and Idle are the only strong Python presences in the film; Palin (the smuggest of superannuated satirists) must have sleep-walked through his exiguous, undemanding role as The Sun, while it must have taken about thirty seconds for Cleese to complete his economy-size cameo.)
As an adaptation of the children's classic, Terry Jones's film is a travesty. Taken on its own terms, it is intermittently entertaining, although it loses focus and becomes excessively silly once Toad has escaped from gaol.
I think the film must be viewed in the context of the time it was made. John Major's faltering Conservative regime still just about held sway in Britain in 1995-6 (the time of the film's production), and the Labour Party had been out of power since 1979. The grasping, treacherous, materialistic weasels - who resemble the Blue Meanies from "Yellow Submarine" - are clearly a satire on the greedy entrepreneurs who had taken centre-stage in British public life after the accession of Margaret Thatcher. (We were still naive enough then to hope that Tony Blair's New Labour would rescue us from the weasels, so to speak. But New Labour were just the same old weasels in disguise.)
Steve Coogan and Nicol Williamson play their roles with more conviction than the film strictly deserves, while the Pythons simply trade on their fans' brand-loyalty. Pretty Julia Sawalha is fetching as the gaolkeeper's daughter