[The Pythons] have a singular genius for making nonsensical fun of all who are pompous, pretentious, humorless, or boring, or who take themselves too seriously. In short, people like me…. Since having watched Monty Python's TV election returns, I haven't been able to watch American TV election returns … without having to suppress a slight case of the giggles. They do that to you, the Pythons—so hilariously lampoon something like TV election returns that the real thing fore...

[Monty Python's TV episodes are] most easily described as a National Lampoon romp through history. The rule, in this sort of thing, is that nothing, nobody, should be taken seriously. Much humor is based on simple iconoclasm…. Which crawls over at the morbid end of the spectrum to gallows humor…. It is inevitable that performers will cross the line. It is inevitable that people will tell jokes about the suffering of others, or jokes that make fun of whole races or religions. It is not i...

Pure, unadulterated madness has invaded the City Center 55th Street Theater. A bunch of lunatics calling themselves Monty Python have taken over the theater and are forcing unsuspecting people to laugh. Almost at gunpoint. They are vulgar, sophomoric, self-satisfied, literate, illiterate, charmless, crass, subtle, and absolutely terrific. They are the funniest thing ever to come out of a television box…. How is one to describe Monty Python? A candid consensus of critics who might be called Charlie Co...

Nobody likes to intrude into a private joke. Seven pages of [Monty Python's Big Red Book] (there are only 64) are taken up with letters and telegrams expressing the supposed reactions of BBC and ITV notables to a supposed foreword by Reginald Bosanquet, the ITV newscaster. It's a fair enough jest, and should convulse all whose names are mentioned, but is it worth so much of the admission money? There are further references to Bosanquet sprinkled about the book. 'What's behind it ...

The Monty Python octet, rooted in British university and music hall humor, likes to go after some of the fundamental ideas and institutions of Western civilization, beginning with Christianity and taking circuitous Lewis Carroll routes through politics and schizoid social behavior in which taut propriety masks an underlying lunacy. The Python group is welcome here because it has a perspective that is generally denied American comedians, who tend to operate out of a sense of individual helplessness. With Mon...

Not all the Python funnies work [in Monty Python's Big Red Book]. In print one is more aware of a sagging jest than on a screen which, in the next instant, is manically alive with Terry Gilliam's animations…. [A] deal of the material is no more than a reworking of gags which the addicted viewer has already tasted. Even so, the Big Red Book embodies that consistently savage view of the universe which characterises the programme at its devastating best. It depicts a world in which the Hav...

It is difficult, one must admit, to write anything clever after viewing a film which includes such episodes as "Hell's Grannies," "Joke Warfare," the brand-new television game show, "Herbert Anchovy Presents BLACKMAIL," and, inevitably, "The Upper Class Twit of the Year Race." These and other sketches are the substance of [And Now For Something Completely Different,] one of the most hilarious and original movies to come along in a while. (p. 22)...

If you liked Auschwitz you'll love And Now For Something Completely Different. Virtually every joke is based on killing, maiming, destruction or sexism. This film exploits women, homosexuals and anyone who pays to see it. It ends with a skit about the "upper class twit of the year." My nomination goes to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Joe Medjuck, "'And Now for Something Completely Different': Associate Editor Joe Medjuck Gets in His Two Cents,&#x...