The Meaning of Making 'The Meaning of Life' (2003)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This 49-minute retrospective doc covers a lot of interesting and entertaining ground on the making of "The Meaning of Life." All the Monty Python members admit that they had a hard time coming up with a suitable follow-up to their previous film "Life of Brian." Among the things noted in this doc are that the budget was cited in a poem that Eric Idle wrote as a sales pitch(!) for the movie, Actors Equity complained that the Python members were playing too many parts and hence putting other actors out of work, the sketch with the puking fat guy almost didn't make it into the picture, the opening pirate sketch was originally going to be animated, and the film won a prize at Cannes. Plus all the Python members jokingly dodge answering the question on what exactly the meaning of life is. Done in a winningly breezy and irreverent manner, it's well worth seeing for fans of the film.

This is a rather good documentary on the making of The Meaning of Life, featured on the 2-Disc Special Edition DVD release of said production, released in 2003. It is comprised entirely of interview bits with all six, not just the five surviving(R.I.P., Graham Chapman) Python members, not all from the same year/time, occasionally inter-cut with clips, almost all of which are from the film itself(there seems to also be one from the show), and a little bit of actual behind-the-scenes footage does make its way into it, as well. It's much more entertaining that that description, the sentence immediately preceding this one, makes it sound. Their description of the process, stuff that didn't make it, their differences, quite a bit of it is marvelous to listen to. It's interesting and fun, throughout. There are facts, accounts that fit more or less with each other, and genuine Python weirdness, in the bits. The anecdotes are golden. The editing is spot-on throughout, sharply cut and clever, all the way. There is some language and graphic content, as well as nudity, the first in the interviews, if not all that much, and all three in the clips. It's best to watch this after having seen the movie, so as to not spoil any of that experience. There is something at the middle point of this that can perhaps best be described with the words "pure Python". I recommend this to any fan of the Pythons and/or The Meaning of Life, as well as anyone who wants to know more about both or either. 7/10