Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie Review

This Isn't Satire, It's Just Impersonation! (No, It Isn't)

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 4, 2012

Imagine that an Elvis impersonator made a movie about the life of Elvis Presley, except that it wasn't a standard bio-pic, but a fictionalized re-telling that borrowed its style from classic Elvis films like Viva Las Vegas. The result might be the rockabilly equivalent of Holy Flying Circus, the best Monty Python film that Monty Python's Flying Circus never made. Top comic screenwriter Tony Roche (In the Loop) has taken a real historical incident—the religious outcry over the Pythons' 1979 film Life of Brian —and retold it as an extended series of Monty Python sketches starring parody versions of the group's six members. The story culminates in a semi-accurate recreation of the TV debate on November 9, 1979, where Michael Palin and John Cleese appeared on the program Friday Night, Saturday Morning to defend the film against the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge, a noted Christian intellectual. The consensus afterward was that Muggeridge and the Bishop lost the debate by behaving like bullies. It also came out that they'd only just seen the film the day of the debate and had missed the first fifteen minutes, leading them to believe that the character of Brian is supposed to be Jesus. (He very clearly isn't.)

You don't have to be a Monty Python expert to enjoy Holy Flying Circus, but the production assumes that you're at least familiar with the six members of the group and, more importantly, enjoy their style of comedy, which is so distinctive that it spawned the adjective "Pythonesque". The Pythons' impact on comedy would be hard to understate. It extends far beyond the forty-five half-hour TV episodes that ran on the BBC from 1969 through 1974 and continued through group projects like Life of Brian, as well as solo efforts like Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (in which various ex-Pythons appeared), John Cleese's Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda and, most recently, Eric Idle's Spamalot, based on the earlier film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And that's not to mention the thousands of comics and comedy shows that have been heavily influenced by Python humor and style, starting with the original Saturday Night Live and moving forward through The Simpsons and South Park.

Screenwriter Roche is a Python expert of the first rank. Not only does he know Life of Brian inside and out, but he also drew on an apparently endless knowledge of the classic shows to structure scenes and borrow references. By the time Roche and the talented cast were done, the daily life of the Pythons had been transformed into one extended Python sketch. Terry Gilliam is reported to have said that he and his fellow members could hardly complain, since they'd been doing the same thing to other people for years.

Like many of the early Python episodes, Holy Flying Circus opens with a bearded man approaching the camera from a distance. In this case, however, the man turns out to be Jesus, who informs the viewer (in subtitles) that everything you're about to see is made up. After some additional nonsense, there's a credit sequence done with Pythonesque (or, if one prefers, Gilliam-esque) animation, followed by a lengthy text scroll that recalls, more than anything, the shambling credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

It's 1979, and the group has just returned from shooting Life of Brian in Tunisia. They gather in the office of their agent, Barry Atkins (Simon Greenall), to discuss release and marketing. Already in these early scenes, it becomes clear that the group's interactions will be dominated by John Cleese and Michael Palin (Darren Boyd and Charles Edwards, neither of whom looks much like the originals, but whose vocal re-creations are uncanny). This may not be historically accurate, but it's dramatically necessary, because Cleese and Palin are the ones who end up on TV defending Life of Brian, and they have lengthy scenes of disagreement and preparation leading up to the appearance. Many of their interactions riff on the classic "Argument" sketch, because they're played as polar opposites, capitalizing on personas from their work both in and out of Monty Python. Palin, who became a genial travelogue host, is widely acknowledged to be the nicest man in the world, and is beloved by everyone, including his mother (also played by Edwards). Cleese is abrasive, argumentative and confrontational, to the point where he feels obliged to interrupt the show at one point for a "paid political announcement on behalf of John Cleese" in which he assures everyone that he's not just like Basil Fawlty but is really a gentle soul who likes kitty-cats and small children.

The other four group members are drawn in broad strokes. Terry Jones (Rufus Jones) speaks with a lisp that grows worse when he gets excited; he's also partial to performing in drag, which leads him to spend as much screen time playing Michael Palin's wife as himself—and since Palin is the nicest man in the world, the Palins have a loving and genial home life complete with an active sexual relationship. Graham Chapman (Thomas Fisher) smokes a pipe continuously and routinely speaks up on behalf of the gay community. Eric Idle (Steve Punt, whose resemblance to Idle is remarkable) wants to make money, money, money; when he's introduced to Tim Rice (Tom Price), who co-wrote Jesus Christ, Superstar, he says how much he too would like to get rich from a hit musical (which the real Idle has done with Spamalot). And Terry Gilliam (Phil Nichol) daydreams in his own world, speaks in a (deliberately) bad American accent, and creates animations and effects that never quite work out.

The Pythons open Life of Brian in America first, figuring that Americans will be more open-minded, because the nation is a melting pot. They are stunned when the film is greeted by protests, picketing and hatred, primarily by people who haven't seen it. So they turn to their native Britain, where the national film board, the BBFC , gives the film a gentle "AA" rating, but local councils are pushed to ban it by a grass roots movement spurred by the Popular People's Church of St. Sophia, formerly the People's Church of St. Sophia, formerly the St. Sophian Church of People. They haven't seen the film either, but they know something of its contents from script pages found in the BBC's trash. Led by Andrew Thorogood (Mark Heap), and with deeply concerned members that include a chronic stutterer and a Tourette's sufferer who screams obscenities, the group is determined to stamp out the blasphemous film and chastise its creators.

At the BBC, the newly appointed head of TV chat, Alan Dick (Jason Thorpe), daily berates his staff for their boring guests. Get me the Pythons! bellows Dick, almost hourly. He's especially rough on his chief assistant, who is named Harry Balls (Paul Chahidi), thus placing Dick above Balls in the chain of command (the Pythons never shunned obvious jokes, and neither does Holy Flying Circus). At first the Pythons decline the invitation, but eventually Palin leads them in a change of heart, as he concludes that it's time for them speak up publicly. The result is the "debate" with Muggeridge and the Bishop.

Palin finds the experience so unpleasant that he almost loses his temper. Almost, but not quite. Sitting in the control room, Dick is outraged that the intense outburst of violence he seems to be witnessing on the monitors is nothing more than "Michael Palin's fantasy sequence!" In reality, Palin has kepts his composure, and when the debate concludes, he storms out of the building. Upon returning home, he learns from his adoring wife and mother that he and Cleese came off better. In a fantasy coda, Palin encounters God (Stephen Fry), who assures him he's done nothing at all to diminish religious intolerance and begins rattling off a series of future cultural events (e.g., The Satanic Verses) that demonstrate how intolerance continues to thrive.

Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

According to IMDb, Holy Flying Circus was shot on the Red One system, and the image on Acorn Media's 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray bears out that description. The image is framed, for the most part, at 2.00:1, which is one of the available settings on the Red One. I have been unable to confirm whether the film was shown this way during its original British broadcast, or whether it was matted to an HD-standard 1.78:1. Regardless, the framing on the Blu-ray feels neither cramped nor compromised.

I said that the image was framed "for the most part" at 2.00:1, because some sequences have had the aspect ratio deliberately altered for effect. For example, specific scenes (e.g., the mock opening in heaven) have been matted to 2.35:1, while a few others (e.g., a mock commercial for Monty Python Christmas Crackers) have been created for 1.33:1 display to reproduce the style of the old Monty Python TV shows.

Whatever the AR, the image is clean, smooth and detailed, as we have come to expect from digitally captured footage. Some scenes have been purposely "distressed" in post-production, but these are obvious. Colors range from slightly faded and dusty in the 1979 scenes to a more fluorescent look in a few scenes intended to represent the present, to unnaturally flushed NTSC-style chroma values for the mock commercial, to the overlit, overcontrast-y look of the telecast debate. There's also an old black-and-white segment with fake scratches and print damage, a mock spaceship sequence (a hommage to a similar sequence in Life of Brian) and, of course, various animations. Each of these has been given its distinctive appearance in post-production, and not one of them looks real.

Since there appears to have been no analog stage in the path from capture to disc, concerns about filtering, artificial sharpening, etc. do not apply, and indeed I saw no indications of such problems. The 89-minute program fits comfortably on a BD-25, with minimal extras, all of them in standard definition.

Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The PCM 2.0 audio track is solid and serviceable, delivering the film's dialogue, sound effects (frequently exaggerated and unrealistic) and madcap musical score by Jack C. Arnold (a prolific British TV composer) with clarity and fidelity.

Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced): There are three scenes. "Michael Palin's Diary" (1:34) would have provided a different transition to the opening credit sequence. "The Two Yorkshiremen" (1:08) shows the local counsel with the strictest censorship policy in all of Britain. "Dick and Balls Get Worked Up" (1:20) shows the top programmer and his assistant at Friday Night, Saturday Morning paying a clandestine visit to Michael Palin's home.


• Outtakes (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 19:23): If you can last past the first five minutes or so, there are some amusing moments later in the compilation.


• The Making of the Holy Flying Circus Phonotrope (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 4:32): Behind-the-scenes footage documenting the creation of the opening title sequence. Over half the running time is devoted to running the finished product, which one can already see (in HD) as part of the main program.


• Production Stills (HD, 1080p): Approximately 30 stills, some from the film, some from behind the scenes.


• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Acorn Media and Going Postal. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Holy Flying Circus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Holy Flying Circus is worth watching more than once just to catch all the verbal references and visual allusions to classic Python that screenwriter Roche, director Owen Harris and the talented cast have worked into the nooks and crannies of the frame. It's possible, for example, to be distracted at the wrong moment and miss the fact that Darren Boyd has perfectly mastered John Cleese's famous "silly walk", which Cleese himself has steadfastly refused to perform in public for decades now. I'm sure there was a dead parrot somewhere in the background of a scene, but I'll have to watch more closely next time. Highly recommended for any fan of Python.