And Now for Something Completely Different **** (1971, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland) – Classic Movie Review 8791

Thank goodness the Monty Python team got the chance to put some of the most famous sketches compiled from their BBC TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus down on celluloid in Ian MacNaughton’s 1971 And Now for Something Completely Different. It is a collection of re-filmed sketches from the first and second series (1969- 70) of the cult TV comedy show.

The fun is occasionally side-splitting, regularly funny, often just amusing, though sometimes untidy, dated or even oppressive. But then it was always a very variable TV show. Patchy it may be, however it is always classic.

And Now for Something Completely Different features smashing performances by the likeable young performers John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Carol Cleveland, and the all-time great classics, the Dead Parrot sketch, Upper Class Twit of the Year Race and Lumberjack Song are here. So are Hell’s Grannies, The Townswomen’s Guild Reconstruction of Pearl Harbor, Nudge, Nudge, Killer Cars and Blackmail.

It is fascinating that it is executive produced by Victor Lownes and Hugh Hefner. Lownes was an executive with Playboy Enterprises. He and Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in 1960 in Chicago. Lownes’s girlfriend at the time Ilze Taurins devised the Bunny costumes for the club’s waitresses. Both men died in 2017.

There were 46 episodes and just four seasons of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–1974).

And Now for Something Completely Different is directed by Ian MacNaughton, runs 88 minutes, is made by Kettledrum/Lownes Productions, Python (Monty) Pictures and Playboy Productions, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, shot in Eastmancolor by David Muir, produced by Victor Lownes (executive producer), Hugh Hefner (executive producer),  and Patricia Casey, scored by Douglas Gamley, and designed by Colin Grimes.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8791

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