When Monty Python’s Life of Brian was released 40 years ago this summer, religious groups and political jurisdictions lined up to denounce it. The British borough of Torbay only lifted its ban in 2008, after Brian won an online poll of what to show at the local English Riviera International Comedy Film Festival that year. (If Torbay sounds familiar it’s also the home of the town of Torquay, setting of John Cleese’s Pythonesque show Fawlty Towers.) Life of Brian tells the story of one of Jesus’s less holy contemporaries, Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), whose life inadvertently mirrors that of Christ. But perhaps the most defining moment in the film is Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, sung during the crucifixion scene.

Source: National Post April 17, 2019 15:22 UTC