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The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Megaset

The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Megaset

List Price: $199.95
Your Price: $159.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: And Now For Something Completely Needed
Review: 13 DVDs of all of Monty Python's episodes of the Flying Circus. For those of you who don't know what Monty Python is, I suggest you not invest in something so vast and magestic yet - try the Holy Grail or Life of Brian before this. For those of you who DO know who Monty Python is, let me put it this way:

"13 DVDs. Monty Python's Flying Circus. All of the episodes. Remastered."

So yes? Enough said. BUY IT!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: From The Halls Of Monty...
Review: ...comes this set of Python! I've discovered that if you're an American Python fan, you belong to an elite group! This box contains EVERY EPISODE (4 seasons worth) of Monty Python's Flying Circus, complete with bonus extras on each of the 14 DVDs. Everyone has a favorite, and they're all here. Mine has always been "Confuse-A-Cat" which is so deliciously dumb, it's hysterical! I haven't run across too many American Python fans in my own circle of acquaintances, but hey --- if you're reading this, YOU must be a Pythonite! Glad ta meetcha! This set is VERY reasonably priced and you'll be transfixed for days with all the lunacy you love. What makes this 6-man group endearing to me is NOTHING IS SACRED WHEN IT COMES TO COMEDY...exactly the way it should be. They take the simple and make it creative. They take the mundane and make it hysterical. They take your money and make it disappear. So buy it awready...it's a gas!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's all there
Review: It already starts with the packaging, that should put a smile on your face before you even start a dvd. But when you do, it's even better!!
Menu's look good, the extra's are great! Animations by gilliam, live performances, a monty python dictionary and sometimes a quiz!
But even without these great extra's, it would be a must buy for all python fans, well anybody with a sense of humor actualy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's...
Review: ...Monty Python's Flying Circus. Picture the scene, an idyllic english seaside town. The sea looks calm when suddenly, out of the water, an obscured figure appears, and begins to move towards the screen. As the figure becomes clearer we can make out his torn clothes and scraggly grey hair and beard. He reaches the beach and crawls slowly towards the camera. Mustering up his last ounce of strength, he utters the immortal word... "It's" And so starts the first episode of the greatest television programme of all time (and british to boot).

What to say about such influential comedy. In Series One, it is clear to see that the group are still finding their feet. There is even the odd fluffed line here and there (Watch out for John Cleese is in "Crunchy Frog"). But the first series has some wonderful moments, for example "the Mouse problem," a brilliant satire of societies attitudes towards homosexuals and drugs.

Series Two, however, is where the group really hit their stride. Not as charmingly haphazard or deliriously surreal as series one, but in the comedy stakes it really goes for the jugular. "The Spanish Inquisition" and the Kray twins spoof, "The Piranha Brothers," are stand outs, but there is so much more that it offers, including the notoriously controversial Undertaker's sketch. Gilliam's animations in this series are also some of his best.

Series Three marked the beggining of the end for the Python's. Cleese had become restless and thought about leaving the group. He was persuaded to stay and the Pythons produced some high quality, yet in parts very patchy episodes. There is genius here - "Dennis Moore" "The Cheese Shop" and "Olympic Hide and Seek" for example. But this also some plain unfunny material, such as "the All England Summarize Proust Competetion" - apparently a classlic, although i've never seen why.
It was probably this inconsistency, as well as a feeling that he was repeating himself, that made up Cleese's mind that after the third series enogh was enough. He felt that "the Cheese Shop" and "Dennis Moore" were the only two original sketches he and Chapman had created throught series three. The rest, he felt were cobbled together bits and bobs of other sketches from the first three series. And so he bid the group adieu.

Stripped of a member, the group stripped the "Flying Circus" out of their title for their fourth, and final, series, simply entitled "Monty Python" However, the absence of Cleese (he does not appear in the show in any capacity and only provided minimal material for the first episode) has clearly tilted the balance, and unfortunately series four is a distant relative even of the patchy series three. To say that there is no humour contained within the episodes would be unfair, but it is, alas mixed in with a mire of cringe makingly embarrassing moments.
Eric Idle once remarked, that if a sketch is over ten minutes long, "It's Mike's [palin] and Terry's [Jones]" Well with Cleese gone their excesses run full flow, a classic example being the long repetitive and dare i say it, boring "Golden Age of Ballooning" episode. The brilliant Gilliam is given more chance to flex his comedy acting muscle, but it is all in vain. Luckily, we are spared from a full thirteen episode run (there were only six episodes commissioned), as it is sad to see a once mighty bunch fumbling in the waters of mediocrity. And so, with a very poignant guitar version of the theme music (which brings a tear to your eye) the last episode of MPFC draws to a close.
Monty Python's Flying Circus is simply the greatest and most influential TV series of all time. It had six great writer/performers each with their own unique talent, a memorable theme tune, an inspired animator, a drop dead gorgeous female co-star (Carol Cleveland). And although it lagged towards the end, the first two series are comedy perfection.... Oh.. and there's something about a dead parrot in it as well.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tonight on 'It's the Mind'...
Review: ...we examine the phenomenon of deja vu: that strange feeling we sometimes get...that we missed a lot in Flying Circus by watching it on television and tape. As a Python Geek of Trekkie proportions since childhood - and particularly during my teenage years - I find that nothing can compare to seeing the old favorites without commercials, and with a billion bonus rarities. There are a handful of technical glitches here and there, but the "Trivial Quest" format is wonderful - as are the additional clips from Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Fliegender Zirkus.

What makes this set worth the price is being able to get that clear digital freeze-frame and find out what you missed all these years (such as the hilarious store directory in the "Michael Ellis" episode, which is illegible on a videotape freeze). The world may not remember the Undertaker Sketch, the Silly Job Interview, or the name of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfernschpledenschnittcrasscrenbonfriediggerdingledangledongle(etc.), but I do - and I can relive them all in a much clearer format than ever before.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: THIS IS EDITED VERSIONS, NOT COMPLETE EPISODES.
Review: Despite A & E's claim to the contrary ["Now, every single moment of the legendary Flying Circus is together in this comprehensive DVD set. From the original "It's..." to "Dead Parrot" to the "Olympic Hide and Seek Final" every single sketch, every silly song, every Monty moment from the legendary TV show is preserved here in better-than-original form, digitally remastered and augmented with extras like Monty Karaoke, Gillianimations art gallery, rare skits from the "Fliegender Zirkus" (it's German, you work out the translation) and much, much more." -- from their web site], THIS SET IS NOT COMPLETE.

I repeat: Despite A & E's claim to the contrary, THIS SET IS NOT COMPLETE. To give you an example, episode # 38 is supposed to begin with a "Party Political Broadcast", but begins with the opening credits and goes immediately into "A Book at Bedtime", which is the second skit. In other words, the beginning of the show is simply chopped off. You can see what the beginning is supposed to be from the list at A & E's own site by looking at their list of the sketches, or in the second volume of THE COMPLETE MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS ALL THE WORDS (a book available from Amazon, so you can check this for yourself).

Additionally, A & E appears to have used a version in which the picture frames are all slightly cropped at the top, bottom, and sides. This appears to be the case in every frame in every episode, from beginning to end. For most skits, this is not a serious problem, but it shows extreme carelessness by A & E.

It is ridiculous to think of this set as being anything close to being a "definitive" collection.

Of course, if this were complete, it would be 5 stars (it would also be nice if they had restored the video, but that is a relatively small matter). Complain to A & E, and wait for them to come out with complete episodes.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Indistinguishable from a dead crab! Get it!
Review: Monty Python's Flying Circus is probably the best way ever to waste hours on end, without feeling guilty. The collection includes just about every MPFC episode ever released, with the exception of the German episodes (though there are some pieces from the episode in the DVD feature section). It would have been nice had those episodes been included, given there are only two, but oh well... Apart from the episodes themselves, there are mindless short quizzes, which are also fun first few times around, as well as many bits from the Hollywood Bowl performance from 1982. The last few episodes are rather bland, but that's hardly the fault of the collection - take out John Cleese, and you compromise the hilarious Python flavor. Without resorting to quotes from the show (and there are so many that seem suitable at the moment) overall, this is definitely a must-have for any Python fan.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Worth your While... A great collection.
Review: This set is a great collection. We have spent many nights in stiches because of these hilarious antidotes. We have watched them over and over again. If you have not seen Monty Python before then I recommend that you buy a set of the first two dvds. This set contains classic skits like Spam, The Funniest Joke in the World, and the Atilla the Hun Show but there are 100s more that will wish you have discovered Monty Python earlier in your life. And now for something completely different..... A man with 3 noses. (HES NOT HERE YET!!) 2 noses? This is a good deal comparing to the TV ordering program but you can get this whole collection for ... cheaper at any whole sale store. Thank you and go buy Monty Python

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A GOOD BUY
Review: Upperclass twits, gumbies, poofy judges and the most awful family in Britian make this DVD set worth [price]. It has 24.5 hours of "FLYING CIRCUS" Including (choppped up and scattered though the DVDs)"LIVE AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL." A GREAT Buy.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One of the better ways of killing time...
Review: Well, I know I'm gonna be burned in effigy by the Python Nation for what I'm about to say, but it's not like I care anyway...

I've never considered 'Monty Python' to be very funny in the laugh-out-loud sense. I did get a bit of a chuckle from time to time, but for the most part I found the show to be loud, obnoxious, stupid, and downright bizarre. Strangely enough, however, it was the sheer weirdness of the show, along with the ofttimes acrobatic physical humor, that drew me in. As if five (sometimes more, sometimes less) Brits performing such off-the-wall fare as 'Upper Class Twit of the Year', 'Dennis Moore' and 'No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition' wasn't bizarre enough, the show's token Yank helped add to this atmosphere of unbelievable strangeness by creating those otherworldly cutout-style between-sketch animations.

In fact, it was these subversive 'toons that I tuned in for when the series aired on PBS. After all, what does a ten-year-old know or care about the Dead Parrot sketch anyway? At that age, the big foot from heaven that tramples the title logo was one of the biggest screams of my socially-inept existence. Fortunately, as I matured, I found myself unable to turn away from the live-action parts and those became a part of my socially-inept existence as well.

Now, about the extra features- each DVD includes 'Gilliam's Attic', featuring some of the cutout figures and/or animations that became an indelible aspect of the show. Also featured is The Pythonisms section, which is a glossary of British terms and vernacular. It's a great way for the Yank MPFC layman to get the banter of the show! Sometimes in lieu of the Pythonisms, there's a trivia section to challenge your MPFC knowledge. Then there's the 'Meet the Chaps' section, highlighting the careers of each member of the core troupe. Also intermittently featured are 'live' versions of the most famous Python sketches excerpted from the Hollywood Bowl movie. The live 'crunchy frog' on disc 2 is disturbingly memorable.

Oh, one last thing: all the discs come in a rather flimsy cardboard sleeve. Try not to place anything too heavy on top of the sleeve, especially if there aren't any DVDs in it. I know this might seem painfully obvious to you, but in my view it's better to be safe than sorry!

Oh, all right... I'll let you in on my fave sketch. It's not 'Dead Parrot', 'Nudge Nudge', or 'Spanish Inquisition'. Neither is it 'Upper Class Twit of the Year', 'Angus Podgorny vs. the Blancmanges', nor 'Argument Clinic'. It's (sorry, couldn't resist)... the 'Cannibal Undertaker' sketch, which is at the end of episode 26. Probably one of the earliest examples of 'gross-out'- style sketch comedy, it's the only time the studio audience was ever disgusted enough to storm the set (though I have a sneaking suspicion this part was staged as well...)!

'Late


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