Spot on comedy and decent social commentary.

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2016)

Although this movie is made mostly for laughs, I think the Python comedy troupe recognized what opportunities the genre afforded them, and used it to their advantage as a way to inspire people to be better. In my opinion, movies should be any combination of three things: entertaining, thought provoking, and inspiring. While entertainment is at the forefront here, there are some of the other two elements here. The primary two things that I think they are trying to get across here is 1. Be able to think for yourself and 2. Be careful who you follow. These subtle ideas are probably more incriminating on religions than any of the actual jokes made. But in some ways, the psychology of the masses that follow Brian are not as inaccurate as they are made to be.
There is a bit of a different feel from Holy Grail here. Once again, every actor has his own style of comedy and plays similar characters, but there is slightly less absurdity, less budget cut gags, and much more verbal comedy. Graham Chapman plays our protagonist again, and mostly makes us laugh through his facial expressions and reactions to the events around him. John Cleese plays most of the supporting cast and probably has the most lines out of any actor. Terry Jones is featured a few times in very different roles, but always making us giggle at his vocal versatility. Michael Palin makes a few appearances, most notably as the ex-leper. But Eric Idle really steals the show in this one, popping up all over the place, often multiple times in the same scene and always with a big grin on his face.
I'm not quite sure what makes the comedy of this movie feel so spot on. Holy Grail was hilarious for sure, but it was outrageous and didn't change tone very much. But with Life Of Brian, it just seemed like the Pythons knew just when to extend their jokes and where to stop them off and how to blend their jokes. Brian haggling over price when he doesn't want to is funny enough, but then they take it further and make it happen at an incredibly inconvenient time. Having a Roman general named Biggus Dickus isn't worth making an extended joke with a whole family of off-color names, so instead they make it a bigger joke by directing the humor at the guards not being able to contain their laughter. Then you get a couple random moments like Brian getting suddenly picked up by aliens. And then adding in tiny laughs like the guy who says he's not different round it out. Of course, this doesn't mean it will make everyone laugh, and it's definitely not LCD comedy, but it just seems like they nailed their comedic pacing. It's really too bad that so few comedies today decide to be more intelligent and original, but I won't go into that.
If you liked Holy Grail or Meaning of Life, definitely watch this. If you were turned off by Holy Grail, this will probably be more appealing to you because it's less absurd. It's probably the best one of the three to start with if you aren't sure you'll like the style, though Holy Grail is the most kid-friendly. There really aren't that many jokes that poke fun at Christianity, but much of the humor requires some biblical knowledge to be fully appreciated. So, this may not be the comedy for you, but I would give it about ten minutes and if you aren't amused by then, it's not worth your time. Overall Rating: 8.6/10.