Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- Terry GilliamVarious Roles
- Graham ChapmanVarious Roles
- John CleeseVarious Roles
- Eric IdleVarious Roles
- Terry JonesVarious Roles
- Michael PalinVarious Roles
- Carol ClevelandVarious Roles
- Simon JonesCedric
- Patricia QuinnMrs. Williams
- Judy LoeNurse #1
Recommendations
- 100
Entertainment Weekly
Life is Python at its most relentlessly tasteless and uncompromisingly Swiftian. - 83
The A.V. Club
The Meaning Of Life is unsparing and elaborate in its vision of humanity at its foulest. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
It’s tough to find the meaning in much of the craziness on display here, let alone the meaning of all human existence as the title promises, but you will find a whole lot of exquisite nonsense. - 80
Newsweek
The best movie to date from England's satirical sextet. [04 Apr 1983, p.74] - 75
Miami Herald
You will not necessarily know any more about life after the film is done, but you'll have killed a couple of hours painlessly, and you will have laughed a lot. [18 Apr 1984, p.C6] - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Unbelievably crass. And extremely funny. - 70
Variety
Gross, silly, caustic, tasteless and obnoxious are all adjectives that alternately apply to Monty Python's The Meaning of Life though probably the most appropriate description would simply be funny. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
A movie that seems consumed with a desire to push us too far. This movie is so far beyond good taste, and so cheerfully beyond, that we almost feel we're being One-Upped if we allow ourselves to be offended.
