And now for something completely different: a Monty Python movie that is completely, painfully, blindingly unfunny. Well, to be fair, "A Liar's Autobiography" isn't really a Python flick, more of a homage to Python done by 14 different animators. But with poster art that deliberately resembles that of the comedy troupe's classic "Life of Brian" and a banner with "Monty Python" swirling at the top, let the blame fall where it may.
"The good is oft interred with their bones," wrote the Great Bard about death, and so it seems with the late Python member Graham Chapman, whose comic memoir serves as this film's bedrock. The film works off an old 1986 recording of Chapman reading his book, but it's set to wildly hit-or-miss styles of animation, the overall zany and hyperactive tone of which sits strangely with Chapman's perfectly deadpan delivery.
Chapman narrates an embellished version of his own life, theoretically looking back on it from beyond the grave. There's his childhood — an endless and unfunny scene of his parents bickering in the car in some dreary English seaside holiday town — and some Freudian analysis of it; and his college days at Cambridge, where he realizes that he's gay ("I became a raging poof ... but a butch one with a pipe"). The film follows him as he gives up medical school for comedy and joins the other comedians who form Monty Python — all but Eric Idle contribute voice acting to the film — and then depicts his alcoholism and sex addiction after moving to Los Angeles.