[b]Owlright wrote:[/b] [quote]Out of curiosity, why do you dislike Life of Brian? I feel like it\'s collectively agreed that it\'s the best of their movies, even by themselves, though I prefer Holy Grail. It\'s odd for someone who likes Holy Grail to not like Brian, and it\'s not like their humor took a sudden turn (not that everyone has to agree with the majority, but yeah).[/quote] I\'ll post what I wrote on the Flixter app for Facebook right after seeing the movie. I gave it 2.5/5 stars. \"This just didn\'t do it for me. I don\'t know if it was the scenery or if the jokes felt uninspired (no pun intended)... maybe the satire wasn\'t sharp enough to take the edge off the blasphemy. I felt like almost every scene took the same approach to humor and there was just a lot of yelling and arguing that was more loud than funny. Not even in the same league as Grail or Meaning of Life.\" To expand upon this, the sets or location has a big impact either outright or subconsciously upon my enjoyment of a movie. I generally don\'t like things that take place in brown, dusty settings. Westerns and sword-and-sandal epics like Troy or Lawrence of Arabia have never appealed to me and I think it has to do in part with taking place in deserts. So it\'s got that against it. Second, there\'s no getting away from the fact that Life of Brian is at times poking fun at the Christ story, which has the potential to be very offensive. The more offensive something is, the funnier it has to be to make up for it. I could make a chart illustrating what I mean but hopefully you understand. If you jab at irreverence and don\'t succeed, what you\'re left with is just a jab, which leaves people either angry or cringing rather than laughing. You can make a joke about anything if it\'s funny enough, but Life of Brian isn\'t. And that\'s the real problem. I just found most of the humor tired. I felt like the zaniness of the other two movies just wasn\'t there. I could almost predict from the outset how every scene was going to go down. In addition, I have rarely heard anyone say Life of Brian is the best Python movie. Heck most people have only even seen Holy Grail. --- In other news, I saw True Grit. Liked it a bunch, particularly the style and cadences of the dialog. Pretty standard western plot lifted from mediocrity by a great performance from little Hailee Steinfeld, the Coen\'s adaptation of the novel, and of course Deakins\' always stellar cinematography. The best scenes were the ones near the beginning that introduced the two main characters. Also I sort of agree about Damon, I just don\'t buy him in the old west.