Brian, despite his denials, is embraced by the masses as the Savior. An annoyed and sissified Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) sentences Brian to be crucified, and not even his mother (Terry Jones) or girlfriend Judith (Sue Jones-Davies) will save him.
Despite the enormous success of the "Monty Python" franchise, both in England and in the U.S., the Pythons had difficulty financing Life of Brian, due to a controversial theme that can be interpreted as spoofing the Gospels. Former Beatle and Python fan George Harrison stepped in and provided financing, which proved an excellent investment.
How others will see it. All things connected with Monty Python remain popular today. Life of Brian is no exception. The unadulterated silliness is rewarded with an extremely high imdb.com user rating of 8.2 out of 10, enough to place it within the website's vaunted Top 250. The user ratings do decline somewhat with advancing age, and is often the case, the women over 45 demographic is an outlier at 6.7. Perhaps homosexuals with speech impediments are less amusing to the middle aged. I can't blame them.
How I felt about it. It is a very silly movie. And it is almost good, certainly better than another parody from the same film era, Mel Brook's History of the World, Part I. It is about as good as the prior Python movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but not as good as The Meaning of Life, which has darker comedy.
The problems with Life of Brian have nothing to do with its spirit. Apparently, a good time was had by all. The fact that the plot or character development is minimal is irrelevant to its quality. Reg is a cowardly leader, Brian is none too bright, his mother is a shrew, Pontius Pilate cannot pronounce the letter R, and this is all we need to know.
As so often happens with comedies, the script runs hot and cold. The jokes run cold with they involve big noses, big dicks, or any of Brian's protestations of innocence. They are much better when they involve the petty, vainglorious politics of the People's Front of Judea.
Reg is our favorite character, because he is actually funny. Second place is Eric Idle, who in one of his incarnations kids his way out of crucifixion. But too many characters aren't particularly funny, such as Pontius Pilate, the stammering jailer and his deaf-mute assistant, the cured leper who's had too much caffeine, the transgender revolutionary, the hermit who's broken his vow of silence, the crowd that worships Brian, and other less memorable ones.