You won't be disappointed!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Boring

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Monty Python's film, "The Meaning of Life" was a major misfire for the group. While it had some very funny bits (such as the Angel of Death scene and the song "Every Sperm is Sacred"), many more parts of the film were terribly unfunny. It just showed that the team's long absence from films as a group was detrimental to their chemistry--they just couldn't capture the magic from such work as "The Holy Grail".However, despite my major disappointment with the film, there was actually a short pre-film that was released with "The Meaning of Life"--though some friends told me that when they saw it the theater did NOT show "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" film! This is so sad because this wonderful film was by far the best aspect of "The Meaning of Life" and may just have been the best moment from any Python film--it's THAT good! The film was written and directed by Terry Gilliam and the other Pythons are not readily apparent in the film (several do appear very briefly and heavily made up). Instead, it stars a wonderful cast of elderly men--all who are working a horribly boring job. Showing the scenes of them working and comparing it to a galley ship was brilliant, but what happened next nearly had me falling on the floor laughing. I really can't say more because it would spoil the fun--let's just say that the film becomes very, very surreal...and funny.Brilliantly written, directed and performed--this is a must-see for anyone who has a sense of humor. A wonderful little film in every possible way.

While the feature this short is presented after in succession, Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, is a very good comedy with the scattered laughs bringing some of their best moments, in sheer audacity and daring with the film-making the prize has to go to writer/director Terry Gilliam for his 'The Crimson Permanent Assurance' (in fact it did at Cannes in 83). The key to understanding it, or at least appreciating it, is knowing that it was originally meant to be shorter, much shorter, as one of the animated segways that connect the segments in the Monty Python sketches. This idea soon expanded for Gilliam, and his 'director bug' (right before his take-off to Brazil and right after his first two solo director outings) took over into this ideally cartoonish, surrealist, and perfectly anarchic comedy of will-power.Sum up the story quick, will do- the workers at the Crimson Permanent Assurance company are old, very old, and very tired and beat down, like the ship rowers in Ben Hur. It finally breaks for their to be a revolution against the bosses, and the old men fight back. On this simple premise, Gilliam builds and builds (with extra help from cinematographer Roger Pratt, and a couple of the other Pythons as extras) until one wonders how this can even conceivably be made as entertainment. I once remember hearing Gilliam on the commentary for Holy Grail saying (sarcastically) 'the stuff in this film is so unjustifiable, its insane', and the same can definitely be said about this short film. It's big (this took up a million of the 7 or 8 million budget of Meaning of Life), its violent, its surprising, and while it maybe lacks only the sort of focused, dry British genius that was in the other members of Python, it certainly doesn't lack the daring of pushing the envelope (in this case, the Assurance 'ship' gets pushed off the world itself). Even when I wasn't laughing hard I was struck by the style of the direction, the fun in these old-school British actors, and the swashbuckling music.

It's funny & imaginative, as everyone else has mentioned. However almost no-one else has mentioned that the film was intensely satirical when it came out - practically everything in it captured the zeitgeist in London at the start of the 80s, from the flapping sacking around office buildings being refurbished to the wholesale layoffs/business closures. Maybe irrelevant to the casual viewer but IMO it's the most political Gilliam film that I've seen. Incidentally I believe that the building used in the exterior shots is Loundes House - still standing just north of Finsbury Square in the City of London.

A satrical look at the way the business environment was changing after downsizing became the latest American import into the U.K. The central theme of men pushed beyond their limits is explored in an extremely entertaining, surrealistic, typically Gilliam fashion. The use of totally inapt equipment, filing cabinets as ship's cannon, is somewhat reminiscent of the use of musical instruments in the Square World episode which won the Golden Rose of Montreux. All in all a sidesplitter!