Monty Python's Life of Brian / YMMV

Accidental Aesop: The various Jewish resistance groups were meant to parody the British far left of the time. Continuing that metaphor implies that the Romans represent capitalism. This realization has made the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" scene a favorite of right-wing pundits.
Awesome Music: Let’s face it, everyone likes "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: For a Monty Python film, it's 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 give Brian a way to escape the tower.
Broken Base: People are split as to whether this or Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the better movie (most would agree that both are superior to Meaning of Life). In general, American viewers prefer Holy Grail while British ones prefer Brian.
Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Quite a number of the people criticizing the film when it first came out openly admitted that they hadn't actually seen it, and so missed several important points, most importantly that Brian is not Jesus.
Fair for Its Day: 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 treated as absurd, if only for the fact that, despite her inability to reproduce, she still demands the right to have babies should she want to. And while her comrade isn't wrong that it would be anatomically impossible for her to have children, his flippant dismissal of her feelings feels as though he's 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 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), and when it's brought up again in a later scene, John Cleese's character calls her Loretta without further comment and even apologizes to her for a mildly misogynistic laugh line meant for Judith.
Genius Bonus:
- Some very early anti-Christian polemics in the Roman Empire alleged that Jesus was the bastard son of Mary and a Roman soldier named Pantera, similar to Brian's paternity.
- In the scene where a Roman guard corrects the grammar on a vandal's graffiti, the Latin grammar is entirely accurate; you can thank former Latin professor John Cleese for that.
  - For that matter, the original poor-grammar graffiti was lifted verbatim from a wall-scrawl from Marseille, dated to around the time of the Roman conquest of that area.
- The Judean Peoples' Front's suicide squad recalls the Jewish rebels at Masada who collectively committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans during the Jewish Revolt.
- "Blessed are the Cheesemakers." There was an area of Jerusalem at the time the movie takes place, whose name translates to "The Valley of the Cheesemakers."
- While the People's Front of Judea were, to contemporary audiences, a clear satire of the infighting among the British far left, the groups resisting Roman occupation really did behave like that.
- While the fact that Brian is based on Jesus is pretty obvious, many viewers might not realize that the sayings Brian makes up while trying to fit in among a group of other messianic prophets are all based on actual passages from the Gospels.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- In Spain, a country with a strong familiarity with the Passion of Jesus (due to its Holy Week and other similar festivities) and an equally strong anti-religion sentiment (you can blame the church-sponsored Franco dictatorship for that), the film is held as an absolute classic.
- Reception to the infamous "What have the Romans ever done for us?" scene can depend heavily on the viewer's country. In lands where the Romans, well, did much, like Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Romania and the Balkans, whose culture is still very Roman (most of the listed countries speak Romance languages, for instance) and where there is abundant Roman monumental archaeology still standing (Spain and Italy have several magnificent examples of the aqueducts mentioned in the scene), the joke is often found utterly hilarious, or even proudly considered not a joke at all. In other countries, it is more easily seen as a questionable apology of imperialism and/or colonialism.
Harsher in Hindsight: The entire "I want to have babies" scene, while not perfect, was seen as Fair for Its Day in terms of representing a transgender woman. However, John Cleese would make several transphobic tweets in late 2020, which can make a positive interpretation of that scene harder to swallow, especially since Cleese's character was the one most opposed to Loretta's transition.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: 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. Ten years after the movie's release, Brian's portrayer, Graham Chapman died from throat cancer, and Idle sung the song in his memorial service.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The scene where Stan/Loretta defends their right to have babies is even funnier with the advent of Mister Seahorse fan fiction.
  - Scientists are working on solving Stan/Loretta's problem in real life.
- "People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse?!" — to anyone who's ever read a computer-generated translation of anything.
- One of the places the film was banned was Aberystwyth in Wales. This ban was finally overturned in 2009 with a public showing of the film organized by the town's mayor at the time ... Sue Jones-Davies, who played Judith in the film but later gave up acting to go into local politics. She actually invited Terry Jones (no relation) to the screening, and he brought Michael Palin with him. It later transpired, though, that the film had in fact not been banned in Aberystwyth — local councillors at the time had discussed banning it but had not actually done so, although by the time Ms. Jones-Davies became the mayor a popular urban myth that it had been banned in Aberystwyth (as was the case with several other local authorities in Britain) was treated as fact.
- The scene where Brian is hailed as a Messiah despite denying being him became even more hilarious when a very similar scene (with some almost identical lines) appeared in Dune: Part Two of all movies.
Memetic Mutation:
- An edited exchange was used in scenarios where a random person's popularity is needlessly inflated by the public:
  Brian: Will you please listen? I'm not the Messiah!
  Crowd: HE IS THE MESSIAH!
- "We're all individuals!" "I'm not." is used as a reaction image and is recreated in clip art as social commentary.^note
- "Sussus Amogus", a dub of the "Biggus Dickus" scene where the joke is based on an Among Us meme that has gained massive popularity in early 2021.
- The screenshot of the roman soldier desperately trying to keep his laughter in at the mention of Biggus Dickus is frequently used in response to situations with obvious dirty jokes.
- The "What have the Romans ever done for us?" scene is often referenced in political debate, though sometimes not in nice ways.
- The People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front are often used as a comparison point within leftist circles to describe the divide between specific leftist factions.
Retroactive Recognition:
- Kenneth Colley, who would later appear as Admiral Piett in The Empire Strikes Back, has a cameo role as Jesus.
- The European Spanish dub has a handful of minor characters being voiced by Francisco Andrés Valdivia, who would become known later by his work in the anime scene.
- Also from the Spanish version: the dubber of Graham Chapman, José Luis Gil, became a celebrity a quarter of a century later, because of playing Juan Cuesta in Aquí no hay quien viva.
Signature Scene: The scene where Brian is on a spaceship with the two aliens and the ending with everyone singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
Spiritual Successor: The film has more than a few resemblances to Jabberwocky; a Monty Python-alumni film directed by Terry Gilliam about a man who is unwittingly swept up in the politics of the ignorant or insane people around him, repeatedly victimized, lionized and all-around abused by the absurd world that they live in.
Strangled by the Red String: Brian and Judith end up in bed together despite having had very little interaction beforehand. Admittedly, the film wasn't trying to be a romantic drama.
Ugly Cute: The aliens in the above-mentioned Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
Values Dissonance:
- Pilate's rhotacism is a major source of comedy in this film, with his followers (and later, everyone in the crowd) laughing uncontrollably every time he says anything. These days, it comes off as a man with a handicap getting picked on. (He does crucify them all.)
- If you look closely at one of the wise men in the opening scene, one of them is played by John Cleese in blackface.
- 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.
- 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 Mel Brooks comedy, but since the actor and writers of this movie are not actually Jewish, it comes across as the equivalent of a white comedian using the N-word for shock value.
- The religious satire was controversial when the film was released, but is not a big deal few decades later.
- The question of whether or not Stan/Loretta is a woman was a passing joke when the film was released, has become much more questionable as a source of comedy with increasing awareness of transgender issues.
- The joke about Brian's mother, Mandy, having been seduced and raped by a centurion. Rape jokes were seen as commonplace in the 1970s, but in the 2020s, it comes across as a tasteless jab at a very serious topic.
Viewer Name Confusion: Some people who primarily only know about the movie through the "Sussus Amogus" meme and its permutations assume that the Roman guy talking to his guards is Julius Caesar, and refer to him as such. He's actually Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judaea; Caesar would have been dead for about 70 years by the time this movie takes place. This might be because most people unaware of the movie who are viewing the scene or a parody of it with no context would assume it's supposed to be some kind of Roman period comedy, rather than a parody of the New Testament set in Jerusalem.
The Woobie: Brian, he never gets a break long enough, and every one of his friends leave him for dead.
Woolseyism:
- The Swedish sub somehow manages to make the "Romanes eunt domus" scene even funnier by having the Centurion translate Brian's original botched Latin as "The Romanians go to the house" (which is slang for "go to the bathroom"). In the same translation, the cheeky guy who makes fun of Brian's big nose asks: "Where are you from? Nose-areth?"
- In Spain, Biggus Dickus is called "Pijus Magnificus" (Magnificentus Preppus). Much subtler than a case of Bowdlerized, though: while "pijo" means prep, "pija" can also refer to male genitalia, just like the original name. Meanwhile, his wife Incontinentia Buttocks gets the more Roman-sounding name "Incontinencia Suma" (Peak Incontinence).
- In Germany, they translated Biggus' name to "Schwanzus Longus" (Dickus Longus). Also, Pilate has trouble pronouncing the 'B' sound, replacing it with 'P'.
- In Italy he's "Minchius Maximus". Minchia (with ch pronounced as k) is vulgar slang for penis.
- In Russia, he is known as "Phallus Magnus".
- In the Hungarian dub, Pilate always says 'L' in place of 'R'. He also wants to decorate his place with "a Goya or some other bird" — conflating the Hungarian word for stork (gólya) with the famous 18-19th century Spanish painter.

YMMV / Monty Python's Life of Brian

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