The Rutles All You Need Is Cash (1978 film)

Why oh why did I sell this DVD? Oh yeah because I couldn't stand watching it alone anymore and no one can indulge both my Beatles and my Monty Python fixation simultaneously. Anyway I love this film and it comes from my Eric Idle phase of my never-ending Python-fixation. The humor is wonderful to anyone who knows the Beatles historically via the late 70s Beatles revival that made this sincere mockery or as I was brought up in the Anthology era. But this is Python humor and a Python product and is an ideal mesh of my two fetishes even featuring George Harrison and Michael Palin in a very Pythonesque scene of an interviewer (Harrison) asking a Bananas (Apple) Records Exec about reports of theft from the studio and the Exec (Palin) openly denying these allegations in front of a studio robbery. The song parodies aren't as good as they could be (except "Get Up And Go" and "Let's Be Natural"), but the history represented in the mockery is the brilliance. Eric Idle as the main interviewer asking a former record exec (Aykroyd) who passed on The Rutles claiming guitars groups are on their way out "How's it feel to be such an asshole?" Other great SNL participants that highlight this piece so well are Bill Murray as the emphatic radio DJ Murray The K, John Belushi as Ron Decline the ruthless manager possibly a hybrid mockery of Allen Klein and Phil Spector both shrewd, fierce and loved by John until personal betrayal and finally Gilda Radner as an on the street interviewee who in a hurry feigns ignorance on knowing who the Rutles were but when coaxed by a slap she goes on a personal rampage of who the Rutles were and how they shaped her generation and her life as Eric fights to get his microphone away from her again. Paul Simon and Mick Jagger give a couple of good cameo spots in the Christopher Guest/Spinal Tap style mockumentary this film has for a tone. All in all the film's a joy for Beatles, Python and/or SNL fans and a strong recommendation just watch it with someone who doesn't love anymore fanatically than you nor someone who is more indifferent to the subject matter because it would be a letdown on the experience.