Well I have to say that I was rather disappointed with this film. It comes across as disjointed and of varying levels of quality. It certainly never reaches anything like the standards of entertainment of the old Monty Python stuff. Mind you I suppose it is clear that it doesn't set out to or pretend to do that. It is, after all, a film based on Graham Chapman's autobiography.
I did read this book many years ago – in part because I and some friends met the man himself back in 1974, and we spent a rather drunken evening together in the bar at the Kingshouse in Glencoe. This episode even gets a mention in the book (page 218), although not in the film; so I have some first hand knowledge of what he was like.
Essentially I reckon the book is an honest and accurate insight into Chapman's life (despite the title), and the film comes across as a project based on the book. The film does some things reasonably well, but mostly it looks like the producers simply farmed out sections of the book to several different groups of students (or maybe recent graduates) of media studies or animation, and then stuck them together using odd snippets of Chapman's own reading of the book.
I watched the film on DVD and found the "additional material" to be considerably more watchable than the film itself, particularly some old 8mm film and the "behind the scenes" stuff on the way the animation scenes were produced!
I did read this book many years ago – in part because I and some friends met the man himself back in 1974, and we spent a rather drunken evening together in the bar at the Kingshouse in Glencoe. This episode even gets a mention in the book (page 218), although not in the film; so I have some first hand knowledge of what he was like.
Essentially I reckon the book is an honest and accurate insight into Chapman's life (despite the title), and the film comes across as a project based on the book. The film does some things reasonably well, but mostly it looks like the producers simply farmed out sections of the book to several different groups of students (or maybe recent graduates) of media studies or animation, and then stuck them together using odd snippets of Chapman's own reading of the book.
I watched the film on DVD and found the "additional material" to be considerably more watchable than the film itself, particularly some old 8mm film and the "behind the scenes" stuff on the way the animation scenes were produced!