Monty Python's and Now for Something Completely Different

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT consists of some of Monty Python's funniest sketches from their earliest years together. Director Ian MacNaughton leads John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam on a hysterical romp through pet shops, marriage counselor offices, and odd London streets and fields filled with singing lumberjacks, dead parrots, hungry babies, upper-class twits, people trying not to be seen, and old ladies on motorcycles, fighting off milkmen, bank robbers, crazy flashers, dirty forks, and killer jokes. The sketches have been recreated for the big screen, without the ever-present laugh track but still loaded with Gilliam's outrageously funny animation. As in the television show, the skits are linked together through clever animation as well as by characters in uniform (Graham Chapman, in this case) proclaiming, "I'm warning this film not to get silly again." Among Monty Python's favorite targets are the military, the police, the British government, the courts, Mao, Uncle Sam, and television reporters. As always, there are lots of men in drag. Even the closing credits are a riot. But watch out for that 16-ton weight....