——What is the Meaning of Life?——

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life — (A-)

VS.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — (A-)

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? I saw two comedies that sought to answer those questions and succeeded with the deft ability missing in most dramatic films of the same type. Both films seem to find that the answer is not really as important as the journey of getting to that answer, and the answer is really as easy as have fun and be nice to one another.

Monty Python’s stab at that most eternal of all philosophical questions might even more aptly have been titled Monty Python’s Look into the Male Mind. There are plenty of bare breasts and penis jokes and more than enough physical humor to keep even the least sophisticated of us entertained. The film never quite rises above being a sketch show and yet it never tries to be more than that either; while characters from separate sketches do overlap with each other it is never for more than the purpose of showing how each sketch has been interrelated. Even the short film that precedes the film (a hilarious look at old, oppressed accountants who take over their firm and sail it around like a bunch of commerce pirates) intersects at one point with the main film as if to further the point that modern commercialism, materialism, and capitalism destroy the fun in life by telling everyone what they are suppose to like. (As Ferris says, “It is not that I condone fascism, or any –ism for that matter. -Isms in my opinion are not good. But a person should not believe in an –ism, he should believe in himself.)

The film is really about how much fun there is to have in life, and really most of that fun comes from sex. A Catholic sings about how every sperm is sacred while a Protestant complains about how stupid the Catholics are since Protestants can wear condoms and have sex whenever they want, although the Catholic is actually getting much more sex than him because of his prudishness. Sex Ed is dissected to its most boring; the teacher has sex with his wife right there in the classroom and no one seems to care. All the schoolroom rules are so complex that the students’ brains have become cluttered and they don’t seem to care about anything other than answering the next question aimed at them correctly. A man is sentenced to death of his own choosing, which just happens to be death by beautiful naked women. Heaven is a bunch of topless woman dancing and singing that it is Christmas every day in Heaven. As Monty Python points out at the end of the movie, the only way you can really get anyone’s attention anymore is with cheap titillation, and it works in bringing out the point of life, which in perspective seems rather mundane.

Ferris Bueller it seems has read of the book of Python and uses his knowledge to live every moment in life to the fullest. Ferris gets away with everything because he isn’t really worried about not getting away with everything. If something is worth doing you do it and damn the consequences, and even though he comes close to getting caught playing hooky several times and seems to show fear in getting caught, he never loses his cool. This is what makes him different from all of the other main characters. His best friend lives in constant fear and ends up doing nothing out of fear of what might happen if he does something. The principle lives under a strict adherence to the rules and is thus unable to adapt to Ferris’ many tricks. And his sister is so envious and spiteful of her brother’s popularity and ability to get away with anything that she has forgotten that she has that ability in herself, and it is only through realizing it doesn’t matter what her brother does, but what she does that she experiences joy at the end of the film.

Ferris seems to hit the nail on the head by recognizing that we don’t have that much time on this earth anyway, so we might as well get the most out of it that we can before it’s too late. Leading a parade is just the tip of the ice burg for him, and he teaches his best friend and, indirectly, his sister to live it up a little before it’s too late. This is the exact same virtue spelled out by Monty Python, although in a slightly different way. But then again, who of us has not at one time or another thought of riding his office building to plunder the seven seas of business investing? I know I have.