Cast

Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin

Film description

Monty Python’s Personal Best is a PBS 6-episode TV series made to celebrate the station’s regaining the broadcast rights to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Each of the group’s members received an opportunity to select sketches for a self-designed episode (all remaining members composed the episode to honor the late Graham Chapman). Terry Gilliam’s Personal Best consists almost entirely of his emblematic animations that combine American directness with a British sense of humour, exploding in their grotesque absurdity and surprising associations, with farce balancing on the brink of good taste. The gems include sketches with killer cars and dancing teeth, a parade of naked women, dancing soldiers, hens, athletes, severed limbs, everything in characteristic collage with a laughtrack and physiological toots. Though the films originally segwayed individual sketches, they work as standalone masterpieces, connected in this release by a few new scenes and an introduction by Gilliam (who also turns out to be an animated character).