IMDb #175 Review: Life of Brian (1979)

Source: Wikipedia

In the early first century, a random schmuck named Brian gets mistaken for the Messiah. The resulting shenanigans are "so funny it was banned in Norway!" Monty Python didn't invent that tagline -- Norway actually did it.

Before any of the Messiah misadventures spontaneously generate, Brian is a regular dude, a perpetually powerless comedic straight man. He lives with his (squawky-voiced man) mother. He hawks animal byproduct snacks at Jerusalem's shitty knockoff coliseum. He somehow stumbles into the mush-brained factious politics of delusional revolutionaries. 

Now the fun begins. Bring on the campy Romans and haggling merchants and chase sequences and a jarring instance of equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity (in a PG movie?!).

But let it be noted. This is not sacrilegious. Not blasphemous. Yes, there's a nativity parody (once again featuring shepherds and wise men erroneously commingling). Yes, there's a Sermon on the Mount sketch (featuring the hecklers in the back who can't hear a bloody thing). Yes, there's a crucifixion scene (featuring no gore and instead substituting the most British funeral song ever written).

May it be written a hundred times on a stone wall in big letters: this film does not mock faith. Actually, the Pythons depict Jesus briefly and tastefully. Instead, they focus on the most universal source of comedy, human foibles. Hypocrisy, dogmatism, legalism, jingoism, and stark idiocy. Also gender confusion: men pretending to be women, men wanting to be women, or men pretending to be women pretending to be men. It's like one long Flying Circus sketch, more cohesive than the other famous Python movie, but still with wonderfully irrelevant surrealism from Terry Gilliam's deranged animations.

By missing the point and assuming whatever message they wanted to hear, Norway committed the same sin as the Messiah-manufacturing mob. Though as far as I know, nobody was mistakenly crucified.

93 minutes.