The long and fabled history of Monty Python has now reached its footnotes and afterthoughts era. After years of interpersonal disputes, multiple forays into the culture war and one very expensive divorce, 85-year-old John Cleese goes solo with a thin 80-minute travelogue, undertaking a European mini-tour while enduring a roll call of ailments (partial deafness, bone spurs, vertigo) which appears at least as substantive as his onstage material. Explaining his motivation, Cleese is not untypically blunt: a wheezy “I need the money” is the closest this film locates to a running gag.
What are we offered in return? Near-relentless gripes and grievances that mesh with Cleese’s recent media profile, ranging from the endless repacking to being filmed at all hours. (Perhaps understandable, given director Andy Curd’s often unflattering angles.) Also lambasted: audiences who refuse to titter at such routines as the one in which Cleese spends a small eternity hacking up phlegm. We get oddly little of the show itself, instead there’s much B-roll filler in fish markets and cheese shops, and an unlovely photomontage of the comic’s battered big toe. (In fairness, he warns us: “If you’ve just had a mouthful of popcorn, look away now.”)
