Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Life's questions are 'answered' in a series of outrageous vignettes, beginning with a staid London insurance company which transforms before our eyes into a pirate ship. Then there's the National Health doctors who try to claim a healthy liver from a still-living donor. The world's most voracious glutton brings the art of vomiting to new heights before his spectacular demise.
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is a gloriously anarchic sketch comedy that tackles life's biggest questions with absurdist irreverence. Its novelty is genuinely high — the vignette structure, the philosophical ambition married to gross-out comedy, and the Python troupe's unmistakable voice make it a singular work. Acting is characteristically strong in the ensemble Python style, with each member fully committed to the absurdity. Cinematography is competent and occasionally inventive (the fish tank framing device, the theatrical staging of musical numbers like 'Every Sperm Is Sacred'). The plot, being intentionally episodic and thematically loose, holds together better than it might but is uneven across sketches. The ending, however, is famously anticlimactic by design — delivering 'The Meaning of Life' as a throwaway gag — which is funny in concept but genuinely unsatisfying as a conclusion, earning it a low mark.