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The real story of this review takes place in 1978. Using what we can only assume were the powers of his own comedy genius, Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) somehow looked 6 years into the future, saw the success of This Is Spinal Tap, then shamelessly ripped off the format, and bought it back in time for use in his own film. Scandalous behaviour, but then again, if Hollywood has taught us anything, its that anyone with a British accent has to be evil - no doubt Eric was just giving in the demands of his heritage. Taking the Spinal Tap mock-rock-umentary formula, Eric grafted it in his secret lab onto the history of the aforementioned Beatles, and a creature the likes of which the world had never seen was born... enter, The Rutles. Unlike Spinal Tap, The Rutles is shot in retrospective, mirroring the story of the Beatles practically step for step, but seen through the darkly warped Pythian mind of Eric Idle. Mock archive footage of the Pre-Fab Four, Dirk, Barry, Stig and Nasty, is intercut with modern interviews with people who knew the Rutles in their heyday. Every major event in the history of their real-life counterparts is echoed with a comic twist in The Rutles - their marriages, their albums, the psychedelic movement, and their eventual financial collapse and inevitable break-up are all recorded with mock seriousness, the deadpan narration (of Idle, who plays a variety of parts throughout the film) belying the surreal humour which dominates the film. The actors playing the Rutles themselves (with the exception of Eric Idle as Dirk McQuickly) were actually musicians, and the various musical numbers throughout the film are actually played and recorded by The Rutles themselves, with the voice of Ollie Halsall (who plays Leppo, the fifth Rutle fired from the band before they were famous) used instead of Eric Idle's singing voice, which even he describes as terrible. The musical numbers themselves aren't just blatant rip-offs of Beatles tunes with comedy lyrics either; instead, each is a song in it's own right - all with nods to the songs they are parodying, but nothing so crude as a simple cut-and-past- the-word-'Love'-with-the-word-'Bum' style song parodies you might expect. This film even has some major star cameo pulling power; not only does Idle get Mick Jagger and Paul Simon to talk about how they knew the Rutles in mock interviews (Jagger in particular seems to have great fun making up stories about his interaction with the Pre-Fab Four, and their manager, Leggy Mountbatten), but the sudden appearance of people like Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, and fellow Python Michael Palin playing bit parts ramps the comedy count up a few more notches (but never past 11). The film even actually has one of the original Beatles themselves in, in the form of the sadly departed George Harrison, who seems to have a great time as the 'documentaries' interviewer. Given all that, why did this film not attain the lofty heights that Spinal Tap reached? The answer lies in the subject material, or more accurately, knowledge of the original Beatles saga in order to understand the parodies and jokes about it. People who know their Beatles trivia, the history of their rise to fame, their music, their films and their feuds, will find all of the above skewed to perfection, providing enough laughs to make your jaws hurt by the time you reach the credits. But woe unto you should you watch this film without your pre-requisite Beatles official trivia-master button affixed to your brain; you might still laugh, in fact I'm sure you will, because the comedy is still immediate - but the references that would have a Beatles aficionado chortling in his chair will inevitably pass straight over your head, and leave you wondering what you've just missed. |
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Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?
Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]
Official and Not-So-Official Websites Groovy Quotes
Reporter: What your ambition?
[after a newspaper claims Nasty said the Rutles were now bigger than God]
Narrator: It was a bombshell for the Rutles. They were shocked ... and stunned.
Narrator: Stig, meanwhile, had hidden in the background so much that in 1969, a rumour went around that he was dead. He was supposed to have been killed in a flash fire at a waterbed shop and replaced by a plastic and wax replica from Madame Tusseaud's. Several so-called "facts" helped the emergence of this rumour. One: he never said anything publicly. Even as the "quiet one," he'd not said a word since 1966. Two: on the cover of their latest album, "Shabby Road," he is wearing no trousers, an Italian way of indicating death. Three: Nasty supposedly sings "I buried Stig" on "I Am The Waitress." In fact, he sings, "E burres stigano," which is very bad Spanish for "Have you a water buffalo?" Four: On the cover of the "Sergeant Rutter" album, Stig is leaning in the exact position of a dying Yeti, from the Rutland Book of the Dead. Five: If you sing the title of "Sergeant Rutter's Only Darts Club Band" backwards, it's supposed to sound very like "Stig has been dead for ages, honestly." In fact, it sounds uncannily like "Dnab Bulc Ylno S'rettur Tnaegres." Palpable nonsense.
[later in the film]
Reporter: It must have been a great honor, meeting the queen.
Soundtrack Review
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Rich's Rating: Rob Reiner's got some explaining to do.
