History YMMV / MontyPythonsLifeofBrian

* FairForItsDay: Stan/Loretta isn't ''necessarily'' a negative or stereotypical depiction of a trans woman, but the concept of a man wanting to be a woman is still [[QueerPeopleAreFunny treated as absurd]], if only for the fact that, despite his inability to reproduce, he/she still demands the ''right'' to have babies should he/she want to. And while his/her comrade isn't wrong that it would be [[DreamCrushingHandicap anatomically impossible for her to have children]], his flippant dismissal of her feelings feels as though he's [[KickTheDog kicking her while she's down]]. That said, her friends accept her despite their confusion, not to mention her constant interjection of female pronouns into her friend's speech is now a common tactic of people who are pro-trans who want those less enlightened to [[PronounTrouble pay more attention to which pronouns they use]]. It helps that Eric Idle plays the character with the utmost sincerity, though even he admitted that it was done for the sake of comedy rather than tactfulness.

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: Religion isn't inherently bad, but it's important to think for yourself and properly absorb the teachings rather than just blindly wait for any messiah to come along and magically fix all your problems. [[ArcWords Think for yourself. We're all individuals.]][[note]][[TheRuntAtTheEnd I'm not!]][[/note]]
** Also, don't squabble over minute details over essentially the same philosophy (like the People's Front of Judea and the other splinter groups do), because someone bigger and stronger will be happy to come along and take control while you do (like the Romans).

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: For a Monty Python film, ''Life of Brian'' is very reasonably paced and well-grounded -- save for the scene where Brian falls off of a tower to be saved by a passing spaceship with two big-lipped and one-eyed aliens onboard, taken into space to pass through a chase in an asteroid field, and then brought back to Earth in a crash -- right at the foot of the same tower. The scene was added merely to [[DeusExMachina give Brian a way to escape the tower]].

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: In the end of the movie, Eric Idle's character sings to Brian the song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to cheer him up while he's in crucifixion. 10 years after the movie's release, Brian's portrayer, Graham Chapman died from throat cancer, and Idle sung the song in his memorial service.

** If you look closely at one of the wise men in the opening scene, one of them is played by John Cleese in blackface.

** The volley of anti-semitic slurs that Brian uses to confirm his Jewishness after he is confronted with his Roman paternity. This might still be okay in something like a [[NWordPrivileges Mel Brooks]] comedy, but since the actor and writers of this movie are not actually Jewish, it comes across like a white US comedian using the N-word for shock value...

-->'''Brian:''' Will you please listen? I'm not the Messiah!\\

* MemeticMutation: An edited exchange was used in scenarios where a random person's popularity is needlessly inflated by the public:

* FairForItsDay: Stan/Loretta isn't ''necessarily'' a negative or stereotypical depiction of a trans woman, but the concept of a man wanting to be a woman ''is'' still [[QueerPeopleAreFunny treated as absurd]], if only because of her wish to have babies. And while his/her comrade isn't wrong that it would be [[DreamCrushingHandicap anatomically impossible for her to have children]], his flippant dismissal of her feelings feels as though he's [[KickTheDog kicking her while she's down]]. That said, her friends accept her despite their confusion, not to mention her constant interjection of female pronouns into her friend's speech is now a common tactic of people who are pro-trans who want those less enlightened to [[PronounTrouble pay more attention to which pronouns they use]]. It helps that Eric Idle plays the character with the utmost sincerity, though even he admitted that it was done for the sake of comedy rather than tactfulness.

* FairForItsDay: Stan/Loretta isn't ''necessarily'' a negative or stereotypical depiction of a trans woman, but the concept of a man wanting to be a woman ''is'' still [[QueerPeopleAreFunny treated as absurd]] though it's specifically her wish to have babies. And while his/her comrade isn't wrong that it would be [[DreamCrushingHandicap anatomically impossible for her to have children]], his flippant dismissal of her feelings feels as though he's [[KickTheDog kicking her while she's down]]. That said, her friends accept her despite their confusion, not to mention her constant interjection of female pronouns into her friend's speech is now a common tactic of people who are pro-trans who want those less enlightened to [[PronounTrouble pay more attention to which pronouns they use]]. It helps that Eric Idle plays the character with the utmost sincerity, though even he admitted that it was done for the sake of comedy rather than tactfulness.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: See [[AwesomeMusic/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian here]].

* BrokenBase: People are split as to whether this or ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' is the better movie (most would agree that ''[[Film/MontyPythonsTheMeaningOfLife Meaning of Life]]'' falls just shy of that honor). All three are considered good movies.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: [[Heartwarming/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian here]].

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: Religion isn't inherently bad, but it's important to think for yourself and properly absorb the teachings rather than just blindly wait for any messiah to come along and magically fix all your problems. [[ArcWords Think for yourself. We're all individuals.]]

* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: See [[Awesome/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian here]].

* BrokenBase:
** People are split as to whether this or ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' is the better movie (most would agree that ''[[Film/MontyPythonsTheMeaningOfLife Meaning of Life]]'' falls just shy of that honor). All three are considered good movies.

* TearJerker: See [[TearJerker/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian here]].

* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** The Pythons tried to bring George Lazenby to play Jesus Christ, but unfortunately he was overseas.
** [[Music/TheWho Keith Moon]] was going to play one of the prophets (the one played by Terry Gilliam) but he died before filming began.
** John Cleese wanted to play Brian, but everyone else agreed that Graham Chapman was the best bet.
** One of the original ideas was that Brian would have been the 13th Apostol, but was always missing the important events.
** Another early idea was having Jesus being frustrated by being crucified in a poorly-made cross.
** Diana Quick, Maureen Lipman and Judy Loe auditioned for the Judith role.

*** The debate Stan/Loretta has with her peers mirrors the politics of what many trans activists on platforms such as tumblr actually believe in.

** One of the places the film was banned was the town of Aberystwyth, Wales. This ban was finally reversed in a public showing of the film in 2009, organized by the city's mayor at the time: Sue Jones-Davies, who played Judith in the film in 1979 but later gave up acting to go into local politics in Wales.

** FairForItsDay or not, Stan/Loretta's comrade having no regard for her feelings when she says she wants to have babies (even if it is impossible) comes off as much meaner than it was originally intended.

* HarsherInHindsight:
** While the movie's treatment of the transgender woman Loretta can probably still be considered FairForItsDay (since some of her compatriots do start calling her by her chosen female name in later scenes, though the protagonist keeps calling her "Stan" and everyone keeps calling her "he"), the scene where she outs herself, with it's mockery of trans women as inherently absurd for being "men who want to give birth to babies despite not having a womb", would ''not'' fly in 2020. In fact, a modern viewer is more likely to go [[StrawmanHasAPoint "Well, yeah."]] at Judith's insistence that they should at least respect Loretta's ''right to want'' a different body and life than what accident of nature has given her (even if nothing can be done to fullfill her wish), than find it funny in the "Political Correctness gone mad" / "Feminists are so silly" way that that the writers most likely intended originally.

** The whole mockery of the anti-imperialist [[LaResistance resistance group]] as irrational and unjustified in their complaints against the Roman occupation, clueless about what their actual demands are, hypocritical, cowardly (at least their leader), ineffectual, and hopelessly divided into splinter goups who hate each other, really leaves somewhat of a bad taste in your mouth if you watch it a couple of generations later, when you remember that this movie was made by a bunch of British guys at a time when the British Empire had just dissolved after being forced by the decades-long struggle of just such resistance groups to finally let its overseas colonies have their indepencence. (Also, the name "People's Front of Judea" was clearly based on a number of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_front#List_of_popular_fronts real]] anti-fascist resistance groups from the 1930s, as well as various socialist/indigenous resistance groups that were fighting against post-colonial-but-still-ruled-by-the-rich-colonizers "Banana Republic" regimes in South America and similar authoritarian regimes in other regions of the world that had until recenty been European colonies.[[note]] (Remember that president Salvador Allende had just been murdered in a right-wing military coup in Chile half a dozen years before the movie was released, for example. In 1979, Iran was in the middle of a popular revolution against its autocratic ruler who had been put in power via military support by Britain (the former colonial power in the region) and the US so a British oil company would be able to continue exploiting Iran's oil, which the democratically elected government that was removed by this coup had tried to nationalize in order to use the profits for the development of the Iranian people instead. And the resistance fight against the colonially-based Apartheit regime in South Africa was in full swing, with Nelson Mandela sitting in prison and others fighting and dying for the cause. That's the contemporary political "mood" that would have been in the minds of the originally intendend audience of this movie. And in that situation, the writers decided to mock, criticize and make strawman arguments against such anti-colonial resistance groups... )[[/note]]) Especially the scene where they list various things that they actually should be grateful to the Romans for bringing to their country (infrastructure, medicine, education, public security, peace, etc.) comes across as ''exactly'' the sort of arguments that the British used to justify their rule in their colonies in Africa, India and so on. (The list is also largely BS in a historical context of AncientRome - see the entry under ArtisticLicenseHistory on the main page - so that makes it look even more like the writers were just trying to [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything score a point against the contemporary anti-colonial movement.]]) But today, the history of abuse and exploitation by the colonial powers is much wider known to the general audience, thanks to decades of work from historians[[note]] (some of whom come from the first generation of former colonial subjects to get a chance at higher education and the respect necessary to be taken seriously in academia - i.e. they were still kids when the movie was first released, and so their perspective was not yet part of the accepted mainstream view of history)[[/note]] and a number of recent BBC documentaries attempting a more honest and less glorifying look back at the British Empire.[[note]] Most of the audience in 1979 probably wasn't aware that e.g. the Empire was originally started to control the slave trade, thus destroying the local traditional social and governmental structures and leaving a legacy of generations of "brain drain" that stunted the natural development of the colonized countries; and that the "straight lines on the map" style of parceling out the African continent among the colonial powers is a direct cause of a lot of civil wars today because diverse cultural groups were forced to live together despite having nothing in common or even being traditional enemies; and that the new infrastructure (railroads etc.) was primarily built to facilitate the mining and shipping of resources and gold for the profit of the upper class of the colonizing country, not to help the development of the native population; and that the cities that the colonial powers built along the rivers all over Africa are the main cause of the malaria epidemic that still costs many lives every year. (The traditional villages of the natives had been located on hills far away from the water precisely to avoid being surrounded by mosquitos all the time. But the Europeans were used to living near water sources and they wanted to be able to transport the gold, rubber and other resources off to the sea and back to Europe without having to build long, cross-country highways. And they needed workers for the mines and plantations, so they forcibly resettled the native population close to the mines and train stations, and therefore near the rivers.)[[/note]]

** The volley of anti-semitic slurs that Brian uses to confirm his Jewishness after he is contronted with his Roman paternity. This might have been okay in a [[NWordPrivileges Mel Brooks]] comedy, but since the actor and writers of this movie are not actually Jewish, it comes across like a white US comedian using the N-word for shock value...

** The whole mockery of the anti-imperialist [[LaResistance resistance group]] as irrational and unjustified in their complaints against the Roman occupation, clueless about what their actual demands are, hypocritical, cowardly (at least their leader), ineffectual, and hopelessly divided into splinter goups who hate each other, really leaves somewhat of a bad taste in your mouth if you watch it a couple of generations later, when you remember that this movie was made by a bunch of British guys at a time when the British Empire had just dissolved after being forced by the decades-long struggle of just such resistance groups to finally let its overseas colonies have their indepencence. (Also, the name "People's Front of Judea" was clearly based on a number of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_front#List_of_popular_fronts real]] anti-fascist resistance groups from the 1930s, as well as various socialist/indigenous resistance groups that were fighting against post-colonial-but-still-ruled-by-the-rich-colonizers "Banana Republic" regimes in South America and similar authoritarian regimes in other regions of the world that had until recenty been European colonies.[[note]] (Remember that president Salvador Allende had just been murdered in a right-wing military coup in Chile half a dozen years before the movie was released, for example. In 1979, Iran was in the middle of a popular revolution against its autocratic ruler who had been put in power via military support by Britain (the former colonial power in the region) and the US so a British oil company would be able to continue exploiting Iran's oil, which the democratically elected government that was removed by this coup had tried to nationalize in order to use the profits for the development of the Iranian people instead. And the resistance fight against the colonially-based Apartheit regime in South Africa was in full swing, with Nelson Mandela sitting in prison and others fighting and dying for the cause. That's the contemporary political "mood" that would have been in the minds of the originally intendend audience of this movie. And in that situation, the writers decided to mock, criticize and make strawman arguments against such anti-colonial resistance groups... )[[/note]]) Especially the scene where they list various things that they actually should be grateful to the Romans for bringing to their country (infrastructure, medicine, education, public security, peace, etc.) comes across as ''exactly'' the sort of arguments that the British used to justify their rule in their colonies in Africa, India and so on. (The list is also largely BS in a historical context of AncientRome - see the entry under ArtisticLicenseHistory on the main page - so that makes it look even more like the writers were just trying to [[DoesThisRemindYouOfSomething score a point against the contemporary anti-colonial movement.]]) But today, the history of abuse and exploitation by colonial powers is much wider known to the general audience, thanks to decades of work from historians[[note]] (some of whom come from the first generation of former colonial subjects to get a chance at higher education and the respect necessary to be taken seriously in academia - i.e. they were still kids when the movie was first released, and so their perspective was not yet part of the accepted mainstream view of history)[[/note]] and a number of recent BBC documentaries attempting a more honest and less glorifying look back at the British Empire.[[note]] Most of the audience in 1979 probably wasn't aware that e.g. the Empire was originally started to control the slave trade, thus destroying the local traditional social and governmental structures and leaving a legacy of generations of "brain drain" that stunted the natural development of the colonized countries; and that the "straight lines on the map" style of parceling out the African continent among the colonial powers is a direct cause of a lot of civil wars today because diverse cultural groups were forced to live together despite having nothing in common or even being traditional enemies; and that the new infrastructure (railroads etc.) was primarily built to facilitate the mining and shipping of resources and gold for the profit of the upper class of the colonizing country, not to help the development of the native population; and that the cities that the colonial powers built along the rivers all over Africa are the main cause of the malaria epidemic that still costs many lives every year. (The traditional villages of the natives had been located on hills far away from the water precisely to avoid being surrounded by mosquitos all the time. But the Europeans were used to living near water sources and they wanted to be able to transport the gold, rubber and other resources off to the sea and back to Europe without having to build long, cross-country highways. And they needed workers for the mines and plantations, so they forcibly resettled the native population close to the mines and train stations, and therefore near the rivers.)[[/note]]

* * HarsherInHindsight:
** While the movie's treatment of the transgender woman Loretta can probably still be considered FairForItsDay (since a some of her compatriots do start calling her by her chosen female name in later scenes, though the protagonist keeps calling her "Stan" and everyone keeps calling her "he"), the scene where she outs herself, with it's mockery of trans women as inherently absurd for being "men who want to give birth to babies despite not having a womb", would ''not'' fly in 2020. In fact, a modern viewer is more likely to go [[StrawmanHasAPoint "Well, yeah."]] at Judith's insistence that they should at least respect Loretta's ''right to want'' a different body and life than what accident of nature has given her (even if nothing can be done to fullfill her wish), than find it funny in the "Political Correctness gone mad" / "Feminists are so silly" way that that the writers most likely intended originally.

** The whole mockery of the anti-imperialist [[LaResistance resistance group]] as irrational and unjustified in their complaints against the Roman occupation, clueless about what their actual demands are, hypocritical, cowardly (at least their leader), ineffectual, and hopelessly divided into splinter goups who hate each other, really leaves somewhat of a bad taste in your mouth if you watch it a couple of generations later, when you remember that this movie was made by a bunch of British guys at a time when the British Empire had just dissolved after being forced by the decades-long struggle of just such resistance groups to finally let its overseas colonies have their indepencence. (Also, the name "People's Front of Judea" was clearly based on a number of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_front#List_of_popular_fronts real]] anti-fascist resistance groups from the 1930s, as well as various socialist/indigenous resistance groups that were fighting against post-colonial-but-still-ruled-by-the-rich-colonizers "Banana Republic" regimes in South America and similar authoritarian regimes in other regions of the world that had until recenty been European colonies. [[note]] (Remember that president Salvador Allende had just been murdered in a right-wing military coup in Chile half a dozen years before the movie was released, for example. In 1979, Iran was in the middle of a popular revolution against its autocratic ruler who had been put in power via military support by Britain (the former colonial power in the region) and the US so a British oil company would be able to continue exploiting Iran's oil, which the democratically elected government that was removed by this coup had tried to nationalize in order to use the profits for the development of the Iranian people instead. And the resistance fight against the colonially-based Apartheit regime in South Africa was in full swing, with Nelson Mandela sitting in prison and others fighting and dying for the cause. That's the contemporary political "mood" that would have been in the minds of the originally intendend audience of this movie. And in that situation, the writers decided to mock, criticize and make strawman arguments against such anti-colonial resistance groups... )[[/note]]) Especially the scene where they list various things that they actually should be grateful to the Romans for bringing to their country (infrastructure, medicine, education, public security, peace, etc.) comes across as ''exactly'' the sort of arguments that the British used to justify their rule in their colonies in Africa, India and so on. (The list is also largely BS in a historical context of AncientRome - see the entry under ArtisticLicenseHistory on the main page - so that makes it look even more like the writers were just trying to [[DoesThisRemindYouOfSomething score a point against the contemporary anti-colonial movement.]]) But today, the history of abuse and exploitation by colonial powers is much wider known to the general audience, thanks to decades of work from historians (some of whom come from the first generation of former colonial subjects to get a chance at higher education and the respect necessary to be taken seriously in academia) and a number of recent BBC documentaries attempting a more honest look back at the British Empire. Most of the audience in 1979 probably wasn't aware that e.g. the Empire was originally started to control the slave trade, thus destroying the local traditional social and governmental structures and leaving a legacy of generations of "brain drain" that stunted the natural development of the colonized countries; and that the "straight lines on the map" style of parceling out the African continent among the colonial powers is a direct cause of a lot of civil wars today because diverse cultural groups were forced to live together despite having nothing in common or even being traditional enemies; and that the new infrastructure (railroads etc.) was primarily built to facilitate the mining and shipping of resources and gold for the profit of the upper class of the colonizing country, not to help the development of the native population; and that the cities that the colonial powers built along the rivers all over Africa are the main cause of the malaria epidemic that still costs many lives every year.[[note]] (The traditional villages of the natives had been located on hills far away from the water precisely to avoid being surrounded by mosquitos all the time. But the Europeans were used to living near water sources and they wanted to be able to transport the gold, rubber and other resources off to the sea and back to Europe without having to build long, cross-country highways. And they needed workers for the mines and plantations, so they forcibly resettled the native population close to the mines and train stations, and therefore near the rivers.)[[/note]]

** While the movie's treatment of the transgender woman Loretta can probably still be considered FairForItsTime (since a some of her compatriots do start calling her by her chosen female name in later scenes, though the protagonist keeps calling her "Stan" and everyone keeps calling her "he"), the scene where she outs herself, with it's mockery of trans women as inherently absurd for being "men who want to give birth to babies despite not having a womb", would ''not'' fly in 2020. In fact, a modern viewer is more likely to go [[StrawmanHasAPoint "Well, yeah."]] at Judith's insistence that they should at least respect Loretta's ''right to want'' a different body and life than what accident of nature has given her (even if nothing can be done to fullfill her wish), than find it funny in the "Political Correctness gone mad" / "Feminists are so silly" way that that the writers most likely intended originally.
** The whole mockery of the anti-imperialist [[LaResistance resistance group]] as irrational and unjustified in their complaints against the Roman occupation, clueless about what their actual demands are, hypocritical, cowardly (at least their leader), ineffectual, and hopelessly divided into splinter goups who hate each other, really leaves somewhat of a bad taste in your mouth if you watch it a couple of generations later, when you remember that this movie was made by a bunch of British guys at a time when the British Empire had just dissolved after being forced by the decades-long struggle of just such resistance groups to finally let its overseas colonies have their indepencence. (Also, the name "People's Front of Judea" was clearly based on a number of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_front#List_of_popular_fronts real]] anti-fascist resistance groups from the 1930s, as well as various socialist/indigenous resistance groups and parties]] that were fighting against post-colonial-but-still-ruled-by-the-rich-colonizers "Banana Republic" regimes in South America and similar authoritarian regimes in other regions of the world that had until recenty been European colonies. [[note]] (Remember that president Salvador Allende had just been murdered in a right-wing military coup in Chile half a dozen years before the movie was released, for example. In 1979, Iran was in the middle of a popular revolution against its autocratic ruler who had been put in power via military support by Britain (the former colonial power in the region) and the US so a British oil company would be able to continue exploiting Iran's oil, which the democratically elected government that was removed by this coup had tried to nationalize in order to use the profits for the development of the Iranian people instead. And the resistance fight against the colonially-based Apartheit regime in South Africa was in full swing, with Nelson Mandela sitting in prison and others fighting and dying for the cause. That's the contemporary political "mood" that would have been in the minds of the originally intendend audience of this movie. And in that situation, the writers decided to mock, criticize and make strawman arguments against such anti-colonial resistance groups... )[[/note]]) Especially the scene where they list various things that they actually should be grateful to the Romans for bringing to their country (infrastructure, medicine, education, public security, peace, etc.) comes across as ''exactly'' the sort of arguments that the British used to justify their rule in their colonies in Africa, India and so on. (The list is also largely BS in a historical context of AncientRome - see the entry under ArtisticLicenseHistory on the main page - so that makes it look even more like the writers were trying to score a point against the contemporary anti-colonial movement.) But today, the history of abuse and exploitation by colonial powers is much wider known to the general audience, thanks to decades of work from historians (some of whom come from the first generation of former colonial subjects to get a chance at higher education and the respect necessary to be taken seriously in academia) and a number of recent BBC documentaries attempting a more honest look back at the British Empire. Most of the audience in 1979 probably wasn't aware that e.g. the Empire was originally started to control the slave trade, thus destroying the local traditional social and governmental structures and leaving a legacy of generations of "brain drain" that stunted the natural development of the colonized countries; and that the "straight lines on the map" style of parceling out the African continent among the colonial powers is a direct cause of a lot of civil wars today because diverse cultural groups were forced to live together despite having nothing in common or even being traditional enemies; and that the new infrastructure (railroads etc.) was primarily built to facilitate the mining and shipping of resources and gold for the profit of the upper class of the colonizing country, not to help the development of the native population; and that the cities that the colonial powers built along the rivers all over Africa are the main cause of the malaria epidemic that still costs many lives every year.[[note]] (The traditional villages of the natives had been located on hills far away from the water precisely to avoid being surrounded by mosquitos all the time. But the Europeans were used to living near water sources and they wanted to be able to transport the gold, rubber and other resources off to the sea and back to Europe without having to build long, cross-country highways. And they needed workers for the mines and plantations, so they forcibly resettled the native population close to the mines and train stations, and therefore near the rivers.)[[/note]]

** If you look closely at one of the wise men in the opening scene, one of them is played by John Cleese in blackface. No really.
** Also when Brian and his mother are listening to Jesus' speech, the rich couple talking about cheesemakers is shown to have a black child carrying an umbrella. Yikes, I know slavery was a thing in ancient Judean times, but still.