Reviews from critics were mostly positive on the film's release. Movie historian
Leonard Maltin reported that "This will probably offend every creed and denomination equally, but it shouldn't. The funniest and most sustained feature from Britain's bad boys."
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times called the film "the foulest-spoken biblical epic ever made, as well as the best-humored—a nonstop orgy of assaults, not on anyone's virtue, but on the funny bone. It makes no difference that some of the routines fall flat because there are always others coming along immediately after that succeed."
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, writing, "What's endearing about the Pythons is their good cheer, their irreverence, their willingness to allow comic situations to develop through a gradual accumulation of small insanities."
Gene Siskel of the
Chicago Tribune gave the film three and a half stars, calling it "a gentle but very funny parody of the life of Jesus, as well as of biblical movies."
Kevin Thomas of the
Los Angeles Times declared, "Even those of us who find Monty Python too hit-and-miss and gory must admit that its latest effort has numerous moments of hilarity." Clyde Jeavons of
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the script was "occasionally over-raucous and crude", but found the second half of the film "cumulatively hilarious", with "a splendidly tasteless finale, which even
Mel Brooks might envy."
Richard Grenier, writing in the
neoconservative magazine
Commentary, said "
Life of Brian contains appreciably more mocking of faddish radicalism and Third World 'national-liberation movements' than it does of religion," citing numerous examples in the film of satire at the expense of "left-wing ideas about imperialism, feminism, and terrorism," reflecting a satirical omnivorousness that Grenier associated with "the tradition of what might be called 'Tory wit,' reaching back to
Congreve and
Swift and all the way forward to
Evelyn Waugh and
Kingsley Amis." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post had a negative opinion of the film, writing that it was "a cruel fiction to foster the delusion that 'Brian' is bristling with blasphemous nifties and throbbing with impious wit. If only it were! One might find it easier to keep from nodding off." Over time,
Life of Brian has regularly been cited as a significant contender for the title "greatest comedy film of all time", and has been named as such in polls conducted by
Total Film magazine in 2000, the British TV network
Channel 4 where it topped the poll in the
50 Greatest Comedy Films, and
The Guardian in 2007.
Rotten Tomatoes lists it as one of the best reviewed comedies, with a 96% approval rating from 73 published reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. Its critical consensus reads, "One of the more cutting-edge films of the 1970s, this religious farce from the classic comedy troupe is as poignant as it is funny and satirical." In 1999, the
BFI declared
Life of Brian to be the
28th best British film of all time. It was the seventh highest ranking comedy on this list (four of the better placed efforts were classic
Ealing Films). Another Channel 4 poll in 2001 named it the 23rd greatest film of all time (the only comedy that came higher was
Billy Wilder's
Some Like It Hot, which was ranked 5th). A 2011 poll by
Time Out magazine ranked it as the third greatest comedy film ever made, behind
Airplane! and
This is Spinal Tap. In 2016,
Empire magazine ranked
Life of Brian 2nd in their list of the 100 best British films, with only
David Lean's
Lawrence of Arabia ranking higher. Various polls have voted the line, "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" (spoken by Brian's mother Mandy to the crowd assembled outside her house), to be the funniest in film history. Other famous lines from the film have featured in polls, such as, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and "I'm Brian and so's my wife".
Controversies Initial criticism and blasphemy accusations Richard Webster comments in
A Brief History of Blasphemy (1990) that "internalised censorship played a significant role in the handling" of ''Monty Python's Life of Brian''. In his view, "As a satire on religion, this film might well be considered a rather slight production. As blasphemy it was, even in its original version, extremely mild. Yet the film was surrounded from its inception by intense anxiety, in some quarters of the
Establishment, about the offence it might cause. As a result it gained a certificate for general release only after some cuts had been made. Perhaps more importantly still, the film was shunned by the BBC and ITV, who declined to show it for fear of offending Christians in the UK. Once again a blasphemy was restrained – or its circulation effectively curtailed – not by the force of law but by the internalisation of this law." On its initial release in the UK, the film was banned by several
town councils – some of which had no cinemas within their boundaries, or had not even seen the film. A member of
Harrogate council, one of those that banned the film, revealed during a television interview that the council had not seen the film, and had based their opinion on what they had been told by the
Nationwide Festival of Light, a grouping with an evangelical Christian base, of which they knew nothing. During the film's theatrical run in Finland, a text explaining that the film was a parody of Hollywood historical epics was added to the opening credits. In the UK,
Mary Whitehouse, and other traditionalist Christians, pamphleteered and picketed locations where the local cinema was screening the film, a campaign that was felt to have
boosted publicity. Leaflets arguing against the film's representation of the
New Testament (for example, suggesting that the Wise Men would not have approached the wrong stable as they do in the opening of the film) were documented in
Robert Hewison's book
Monty Python: The Case Against.
Crucifixion issue One of the most controversial scenes was the film's ending: Brian's
crucifixion. Many Christian protesters said that it was mocking Jesus' suffering by turning it into a "Jolly Boys Outing" (such as when Mr Cheeky turns to Brian and says: "See, not so bad once you're up!"), capped by Brian's fellow sufferers suddenly bursting into song. This is reinforced by the fact that several characters throughout the film claim crucifixion is not as bad as it seems. For example, when Brian asks his cellmate in prison what will happen to him, he replies: "Oh, you'll probably get away with crucifixion". In another example, Matthias, an old man who works with the People's Front of Judea, dismisses crucifixion as "a doddle" and says being stabbed would be worse. The director, Terry Jones, issued the following response to this criticism: "Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly."
Responses from the cast Shortly after the film was released, Cleese and Palin engaged in a
debate on the
BBC2 discussion programme
Friday Night, Saturday Morning with
Malcolm Muggeridge and
Mervyn Stockwood, the
Bishop of Southwark, who put forward arguments against the film. Muggeridge and Stockwood, it was later claimed, had arrived 15 minutes late to see a screening of the picture prior to the debate, missing the establishing scenes demonstrating that Brian and Jesus were two different characters, and hence contended that it was a send-up of Christ himself. The Pythons unanimously deny that they were ever out to destroy people's faith. On the
DVD audio commentary, they contend that the film is
heretical because it
lampoons the practices of modern organised religion, but that it does not blasphemously lampoon the God that Christians and Jews worship. When Jesus does appear in the film (on the Mount, speaking the
Beatitudes), he is played straight (by actor
Kenneth Colley) and portrayed with respect. The music and lighting make it clear that there is a genuine
aura around him. The comedy begins when members of the crowd mishear his statements of peace, love and tolerance ("I think he said, 'blessed are the cheese makers'"). Importantly, he is distinct from the character of Brian, which is also evident in the scene where an annoying and ungrateful ex-
leper pesters Brian for money, while moaning that since Jesus cured him, he has lost his source of income in the begging trade (referring to Jesus as a "bloody do-gooder"). James Crossley, however, has argued that the film makes the distinction between Jesus and the character of Brian to make a contrast between the traditional Christ of both faith and cinema and the
historical figure of Jesus in critical scholarship and how critical scholars have argued that ideas later got attributed to Jesus by his followers. Crossley points out that the film uses the character of Brian to address a number of potentially controversial scholarly theories about Jesus, such as the
Messianic Secret, the Jewishness of Jesus, Jesus the revolutionary, and having a single mother. In the DVD's audio commentary, Terry Gilliam says, "We were pilloried by religious groups on all sides from Jews to Catholics to Protestants. To me, what's important is that we managed to offend a lot of people. But as you notice, we were very cautious about offending any Muslims. We would say
nothing negative about a Muslim, 'cause we'd get a
fatwa after us. But your Jews, your Christians, they're easy to push around." Not all the Pythons agree on the definition of the movie's tone. There was a brief exchange that occurred when the surviving members reunited in Aspen, Colorado, in 1998. In a later interview, Jones said the film "isn't blasphemous because it doesn't touch on belief at all. It is heretical, because it touches on dogma and the interpretation of belief, rather than belief itself."
21st century The film continues to cause controversy; in February 2007, the
Church of St Thomas the Martyr in
Newcastle upon Tyne held a public screening in the church itself, with song-sheets, organ accompaniment, stewards in costume and false beards for female members of the audience (alluding to an early scene where a group of women disguise themselves as men so that they are able to take part in a
stoning). Although the screening was a sell-out, some Christian groups, notably the conservative
Christian Voice, were highly critical of the decision to allow the screening to go ahead.
Stephen Green, the head of Christian Voice, insisted that "You don't promote Christ to the community by taking the mick out of him." The Reverend Jonathan Adams, one of the church's clergy, defended his taste in comedy, saying that it did not mock Jesus, and that it raised important issues about the hypocrisy and stupidity that can affect religion. Again on the film's DVD commentary, Cleese also spoke up for religious people who have come forward and congratulated him and his colleagues on the film's highlighting of double standards among purported followers of their own faith. In 2009, it was announced that a thirty-year-old ban of the film in the Welsh town of
Aberystwyth had finally been lifted, and the subsequent showing was attended by
Terry Jones and
Michael Palin alongside mayor
Sue Jones-Davies (who portrayed Judith Iscariot in the film). However, before the showing, an
Aberystwyth University student discovered that a ban had only been discussed by the council and in fact that it had been shown (or scheduled to be shown) at a cinema in the town in 1981. In 2013, a German official in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia considered the film to be possibly offensive to Christians and hence subject to a local regulation prohibiting its public screening on
Good Friday, despite protests by local atheists. ==Political satire==