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Life of Brian Movie Review

Life of Brian is a 1979 comedy film directed by Terry Jones and starring the comedy group Monty Python. It’s another one of their movies that did not appeal to me at all.

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“He’s not the Messiah.

He’s a very naughty boy!

Now, piss off!“

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It’s about a young Jewish man who is born on the same day as Jesus Christ, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah. I expected great things from this movie, even though I wasn’t a fan of ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. Simply judging by the premise, I thought I was in for a great movie that parodies Christianity and everything that it pertains.

However, the movie itself ended up being rather slim and nowhere near as thematically rich nor as sophisticated as I’d hoped it would be. Yes, some scenes are excellent. The highlights include the mob scenes and especially that very modern, amusing scene about trangsenderism that is very much ahead of its time.

But I did not like the ending at all with that musical number being misplaced. I did not like the crew’s typically over-the-top, forced humor that never appealed to me personally. I do not like when I see the acting in actors, and with them I always see someone that tries way too hard to be funny, and thus most of the time it rang false and unfunny.

Life of Brian has some good jokes, I have to admit. It does make fun of the mob mentality, dogmatism, lack of individuality and so on. But most of the time, those interesting themes are only slightly touched upon or even brushed aside in favor of very plain, crude, childish humor surrounding word puns and curses. I never liked such humor and here it was overly abundant.

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As for its technical aspects, I found the cinematography pretty good, the editing is also strong and the production design is splendid. The movie’s originality is hard to deny, but I personally found its structure overly weird. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue and the script was weak in my opinion, thus blunting the impact of some undeniably great sequences here and there.

Life of Brian is another overrated Monty Python movie. Some scenes are undeniably funny and memorable, but most of the movie brushed aside its important themes in favor of crude, childish word puns and curses that never appealed to me personally. The movie is undeniably original, but only sporadically did I find it truly good and funny. Most of it felt forced, annoying and overly exaggerated.