I'll say this- like with so many of my posts, this isn't going to have a definitive answer. To the point where I've actually said as much before we go on.
Dramatic licence and creative adaptation are all well and good. But when it comes to Frank Langella shouting "When the president does it, it's not illegal" while the real Nixon merely stated it as quiet fact in the true interview, all for the purposes of a crescendo, a turning of the tables in the dramatised debate, is it really worth it? If you want that, then have it. But make a political drama, write a new story, in which such an event occurs. Don't change history. More importantly, don't change what was a great, subtle moment in the undoing of Nixon by Frost. It cheapens the very interview it was inspired by.
It was a similar affair, but much more widely and liberally apportioned, with Holy Flying Circus. This 'dramatic re-telling', as it was marketed, of the furore around The Life of Brian felt as though it was trying too hard to be Python-esque in the weird and whacky but organic way that they were, in the same way that Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing tried to hard to capture the absurd humour of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Trilogy (of Five). The end result was something forced, a bit of a mess.
The one thing I will say the film got right was the casting- well, in the most part, but I'll explain the exception later. The actors picked to play the Python crew were spot on, with Charles Edward, Darren Boyd and Rufus Jones in particular standing out as Michael Palin, John Cleese and Terry Jones respectively. Steve Punt as Eric Idle and Tom Fisher as Graham Chapman were good in support, while Phil Nichol was okay as Gilliam, though we saw just little enough for him to not mind too much- the luck in casting the weakest actor as the least visible Python can't have gone unnoticed.
The one piece of casting I had trouble with was Mark Heap as Andrew Thorogood, the main protester (in this film, at least) against the film who makes it his mission to whip up a frenzy about it. Heap is perhaps best known for playing Brian Topp from Spaced, and the shame is he plays exactly the same character here, minus the goatee. It's like a bizarre alternate-universe Star Trek episode where the evil, goatee sporting Brian becomes the good, goatee-less Andrew. And Thorogood's two companions with Tourette's syndrome and a stammer between them, just for the purpose of carrying on the 'tradition' of taking the mick out of speech impediments, a vein of comedy tapped by Life of Brian, noted as having had the mickey taken out of it in LoB by HFC, and therefore attempted to be continued by the latter for no other reason. It wasn't that they were offensive, or crude, or even edgy. They just weren't funny.
While we're on the subject of Channel 4 comedies, I hope Graham Linehan watched this and is ready to sue their boots off. If the TV boss of Friday Night, Saturday Morning wasn't ripped from Denholm & Douglas Reynholm from The IT Crowd then I've never watched telly before. Ever.
Then there were the pop culture references, such as the completely unoriginal lightsaber
sequence. Or the all-too-knowing nods to original Python material. The scene in LoB where the crowd repeats, in unison, that "we can all think for ourselves" is funny. The same joke with different words, written into HFC as a crowd of Christians and protesters telling Michael Palin that "We are not sinister or intimidating. We are merely following you and watching you" as he addresses them, Graham Chapman-/ Brian-like, from his bedroom window, just isn't.
The final straw for me was the way this 'dramatic re-telling' ruined any point it could have had, burying it in a surreal Palin nightmare sequence far-too-similar to the flashes of The Monk's mind shown in the Vinnie Jones vehicle Mean Machine for their own good. In the debate at the end of the programme the writers have Palin get up an smash a jug in the bishop's face. Then Cleese begins a series of Funny Walks, it descends into a brawl, and it all returns to normal again in time for us to see the end of the interview.
Now, if we're going so far as to change what happens on screen and fill it with creative licence based around the events, why not have the revelations that the bishop hadn't seen the first 15-20 mins of the film happen on stage? Sort it out that way, with the audience back then reflecting the opinion of audiences now, decades after the debate?
Perhaps they were hoping that the few good gags in the ninety minute film, a lot of which come after the debate when we get a great fourth-wall rip featuring Palin and Stephen Fry as God, would distract the audience from such things. It didn't, and the film felt flat, unfunny, oddly paced and wasted.
So, was this film: Necessary? No. Entertaining? In patches. Worth it? I wouldn't say so, no.
And, to tack on to the end of this querying grumble, Shirley. This recent drama biopic about Shirley Bassey, who also is still alive, falls into that other cliché minefield of musical biopics (think Dreamgirls, Ray, Walk the Line and dozens of others) in rags to riches-ness. It's a whole other story, which I won't get into. Although it did manage to avoid the drug addiction cliché trap; whether or not that was because the producers/ writers wanted to emphasise the mothering instinct of Bassey as a woman, a bit different to the male-centred musical biopic genre (Ray, Walk the Line, The Rocker) rather than any decision to stick with or not elaborate on the truth for dramatic effect I'm not sure.
I do know, though, that with all three of these I would rather watch the originals, all available for free in this wonderful age of the internet, and read about their stories in biographies or even on Wikipedia than be told something "true" in such an adaptation and come away with the wrong idea. Original is always best.
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