And Now for Something Completely Different

And Now for Something Completely Different

Last few seasons of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which is a comedy series broadcasted on BBC-TV in Britain that has achieved high ratings and stirred controversies, became an inspiration for the movie. No other television program can be compared with it; maybe it could be considered as “Laugh-In” made with wit and intelligence.

BBC radio’s ‘Goon Show’ had the same wackiness as the TV show, which was immortalized here on cherished record albums and once in a while brought back to life again by WFMT’s ‘Midnight Special’. That was the show that introduced Peter Sellers among others and its flavor was caught in Richard Lester’s classic short subject, ;The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film.” If you liked that, you’ll like “And Now For Something Completely Different.”

Five men and two women play some 100 characters in this movie, wandering through a series of sketches linked together by animated interludes. Some logical madness seems to connect the sketches, if you look hard enough, but mostly the movie just lives in the present and tries anything for a laugh.

There is, for example, this sketch about the Hungarian in the tobacconist’s shop. “This record is scratched,” he announces confidently. Later he gets into trouble when he tries to ask directions and instead insults people with obscene phrases. The publisher of his English-Hungarian dictionary eventually is dragged into court on charges of breaching the peace but not before several hapless Hungarian buyers of his dictionary have gotten themselves into unspeakable embarrassments.

Then there’s the section about “Granny Gangs,” wolf packs of little old ladies who roam the city assaulting young men by banging them over their heads with their purses. And the gang of “Baby Snatchers” full-grown men in diapers who snatch people away from the fronts of supermarkets. “I just left him here for a moment while I went inside to buy something,” a woman tells police after her husband is snatched. And the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” contest. And a unique TV show named ‘Blackmail,’ where secret films of people’s private lives are shown. The victims have to telephone in a money offer to have the film stopped.

Some of these things strike some people as funny and others do not, and so the audience is curiously frustrated. It’s odd to find yourself laughing when everyone else is silent, and strange when everyone laughs and you don’t get the joke. National humors and characteristics sometimes travel badly; I remember seeing “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Moscow Film Festival and hearing it criticized afterward as just American braggadocio about the interior decoration on our spaceships.

Watch And Now for Something Completely Different For Free On Gomovies.