YMMV / The Rutles

• All Animation Is Disney: Because of its similar brand of humor and the fact that it's presented by Eric Idle, a surprising amount of people seem to assume that All You Need Is Cash (or the Rutles as a whole) is a Monty Python creation, despite the fact that it originated from Idle's solo sketch show Rutland Weekend Television, made after the end of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Idle was the only Python involved (besides Michael Palin appearing as Eric Manchester in All You Need Is Cash). Even some news articles made this assumption, crossing it into Cowboy BeBop at His Computer.^note Admittedly, this might have to do with the fact that Neil Innes, who played Ron Nasty and composed all of the Rutles' songs, had collaborated many times with the Pythons, to the point that he is considered one of the two people to deserve the status of being the unofficial "Seventh Python" (the other being Carol Cleveland).
• Awesome Music: Neil Innes' songs imitated The Beatles songs so well that they wound up on Beatles bootleg albums, and one fan actually accused him of stealing "Cheese and Onions" from an unreleased Beatle tape. He was taken to court for the songs, and had to testify that he hadn't listened to the original songs while making the soundtrack, just wrote from memory. There's no way to deny that's stunning. Moreover, the songs don't merely work as parodies and pastiches; they are legitimately great pop songs in their own right.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In All You Need Is Cash, Dirk McQuickly's wife Martini being introduced appearing bored and disinterested, even unhappy, is hilarious when contrasted with her musician husband Dirk absent-mindedly composing songs, but less so when one realizes that Martini's actress Bianca Jagger divorced her musician husband Mick Jagger (who incidentally also appears in the film) shortly after the film was released.
  • All You Need Is Cash also dwells heavily on the dissolution of the Beatles, mirroring it in the dissolution of the Rutles in hilarious ways, mostly in the form of Frivolous Lawsuits. ("Let It Rot was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit.") Less funny when one realizes that in real life Neil Innes had a falling out with Eric Idle, and was sued by the music publisher that owned the rights to the Beatles' music and lost.
  • All You Need Is Cash's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue says that Nasty (the Lennon analogue) "has turned his back on the world, and sits with his thoughts and his memories." At the time the film was made, this was an obvious reference to the real Lennon actually being in retirement (and which the real Lennon found Actually Pretty Funny, for what it's worth). Unfortunately, the events of December 8, 1980 proved to give a different epilogue for the real Lennon.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When John Lennon watched the movie, he told them that the songs they did ("Get Up and Go" in particular) were too close to the real thing and that Paul McCartney might sue them. While Paul was fine with the whole project, ATV Music (who owned the rights to the Beatles' music) objected and sued, resulting in half the royalties for all the material going into the Lennon-McCartney bankbook.
  • The film parodies the Bigger Than Jesus incident through Ron Nasty supposedly claiming that they were "Bigger Than God" (only for it to turn out that he actually said "Bigger Than Rod"). Almost two decades later, Noel Gallagher would make the exact same claim.
• Sequelitis:
  • While All You Need is Cash is great, Can't Buy Me Lunch is awful beyond comprehension. It has a lot of pointless and unfunny celebrity cameos, mostly from American actors — which doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of the spoof — and repeats basically the same kind of jokes and situations. The rest is Stock Footage from the first movie. Even people who do like the sequel have to admit that it adds nothing to the original. Even worse, the film was more or less an intentional slap in the face from Eric Idle to Neil Innes; the story suddenly rewrites concepts (like the 'table-tapping weekend') likely attributed to Innes, and all music heard is taken from Archaeology (The Rutles' version of The Beatles Anthology), which Idle had refused to take part in.
  • Averted with Archaeology itself, which is overall regarded quite warmly.
• Spiritual Adaptation: More like Spiritual Spinoff, but some consider All You Need Is Cash as the first Saturday Night Live spinoff to be made, since its origins trace back to a Rutles skit from Rutland Weekend Television being shown on SNL while Eric Idle guest-hosted the show, was made with the help of Lorne Michaels for NBC, and several SNL castmembers appear on the film (John Belushi as Ron Decline, Dan Aykroyd as Brian Thigh [the executive that turned down the Rutles], Gilda Radner as Mrs. Emily Pules [the woman interviewed on the street about the Rutles], Bill Murray as Bill Murray the K, Al Franken and Tom Davis as Ron Decline's henchmen, and Michaels himself as a sleazy merchandiser).
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Lots of their work is like this; they cleverly play off of the styles and lyrics of individual songs rather than doing note-for-note parodies. Compare "Back in '64" to "When I'm 64," for instance.
  • "Get Up and Go" is probably the closest, following the structure and chord progression of "Get Back" so closely that you can sing one over the other. In fact, it was the song John Lennon told them that was so close to the real thing that they might get sued from it. Which is especially interesting, because bootlegs show "Get Up and Go" to have been originally written with a noticeably different melody; yet the final version is a near-identical mimic of "Get Back".
• Tear Jerker:
  • Perhaps unexpectedly, "Don't Know Why" (the pastiche of "Free as a Bird" that references Innes' hardships relating to the original Rutles project, including his losing of the ATV lawsuit and his fractious relationship with Eric Idle), "Let's Be Natural" (the Rutles' take on "Dear Prudence", although more on the bittersweet side) and "Back in '64" (an Answer Song of sorts to "When I'm 64").
  • Innes' unexpected death in late 2019 prompted a large number of tributes from the likes of John Cleese, Edgar Wright, Charlie Brooker, Mark Gatiss, Michael McKean, Billy Bragg, Rick Wakeman, Stephen Fry, Simon Blackwell, Diane Morgan, Richard Herring, and numerous others.

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