Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Six fish in a restaurant's tank greet each other, then see their friend being eaten. This leads them to question the meaning of life. In the first sketch, "The Miracle of Birth", maternity doctors ignore a woman in labour while trying to impress the hospital's administrator. In Yorkshire, a Roman Catholic man is made redundant from his job, and informs his numerous children that he must sell them for scientific experiments. A Protestant man looks on disapprovingly and proudly remarks that Protestants can use contraception and have sex for pleasure (although his wife observes that they never do). In "Growth and Learning", a class of boys learn school etiquette before partaking in a sex education lesson, which involves watching their teacher have sex with his wife. One boy laughs and is forced into a violent rugby match pitting pupils against the school masters as punishment. "Fighting Each Other" features three scenes concerning the British military. First, during the Battle of the Somme in World War I, a British officer tries to rally his men during an attack, but they instead present him with going-away gifts. Second, a modern army RSM bullies his soldiers to say what they would rather be doing than marching drills, then dismisses each in turn. Lastly, in 1879 during the Anglo-Zulu War during the Battle of Rorke's Drift, a soldier finds his leg has been bitten off. Suspecting a tiger, the soldiers hunt for it and find two men in a tiger costume. An announcer introduces "The Middle of the Film," during which bizarre characters challenge the audience in a segment called "Find the Fish." "Middle Age" involves an American couple visiting a Hawaiian restaurant with a medieval torture theme, where, to the interest of the fish, the waiter offers a conversation about philosophy and the meaning of life. The customers are unable to make sense of it and move on to a discussion of live organ transplants. In "Live Organ Transplants", two paramedics visit an organ donor and forcibly remove his liver while he is alive. His wife is reluctant to donate her liver, but she relents after a man steps out of a refrigerator and reminds her of humanity's insignificance in the universe. Executives of an American conglomerate debate the meaning of life before a raid by The Crimson Permanent Assurance briefly interrupts them. "The Autumn Years" starts with a musician in a French restaurant singing about the joys of having a penis. As the song ends, the ill-tempered glutton Mr. Creosote enters the restaurant, causing the fish to scatter and hide. He vomits continually and devours an enormous meal. After the maître d'hôtel persuades him to eat an after-dinner mint, Creosote's gut explodes, splattering the other diners. In "The Meaning of Life", the restaurant's cleaning woman proposes that life is meaningless before revealing that she is a racist. A waiter leads the audience to the house where he was born, recalls his mother's lessons about kindness, and then becomes angry when his point trails off. "Death" features a condemned man choosing the manner of his own execution: being chased off the Cliffs of Dover by topless women in sports gear and falling into his own grave below. In a short animated sequence, despondent leaves commit suicide by throwing themselves from the branches of a tree. The Grim Reaper enters an isolated home and convinces the hosts and dinner guests, with difficulty, that they are all dead. They accompany the Grim Reaper to Heaven, revealed to be the Hawaiian restaurant from earlier. They enter a Las Vegas-style hotel where they meet the characters from the previous sketches, and Tony Bennett-esque singer begins to sing about how amazing life is where it is always Christmas and various commercial items that can be bought in Heaven are there. The song abruptly ends for "The End of the Film". The hostess from "The Middle of the Film" opens an envelope and blandly reveals the meaning of life: ==Cast==