Monty Python team returns with comic treat in Absolutely Anything

And now for something completely different — Monty Python’s first film since The Meaning of Life in 1983.

Supplied Editorial Absolutely Anything

Absolutely Anything is the first film to feature the five living members of Monty Python (the urbane Graham Chapman having gone to the Flying Circus in the sky almost 30 years ago now) since The Meaning of Life in 1983. Directed by Terry Jones, it is a marvellous reminder of the Pythons’ strange and subversive wit.

Take a pivotal scene in which a gigantic alien spaceship intercepts a probe sent from Earth in an attempt to discover if there are other life forms in the universe and, if so, connect with them. The self-appointed Intergalactic Council of Superior Beings, a grotesque assembly of lobster, turtle and owl-like blobs, voiced by Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, decode the earthlings’ message — “They say they come in peace and mean no harm to anyone” — and fall about laughing.

The council is led by a particularly bellicose alien named Sharon (Cleese). Another brute is called Kylie. The Pythons were ever fond of frocks, but when the explanation for these odd names arrives it is one sure to tickle local ­audiences. There’s a hint in the theme song, ­Absolutely Anything and Anything at All, performed by our own Ms Minogue.

Anyway, having been alerted to humanity’s existence, the council must decide whether to obliterate the planet on the grounds it is host to inferior beings, or let it be.

The termination job would fall to a cigar-smoking alien mercenary known as Salubrious Gat (Eric Idle), and the odds are not good, as he points out: of the hundreds of thousands of other life forms so far detected by the council, the number not wiped out is zero. “We have high standards,’’ sniffs the chief in reply.

But a stickler member of the council points out the earthlings must have chance to prove themselves. One will be chosen at random and bestowed with the power to do absolutely anything. All of humanity will be judged on how this one human handles God-like power.

There’s a terrifying moment, for the viewer, when it looks like the spinning wheel of fortune will choose Sarah Palin, but fortunately it turns a tad further and lands on rumpled North London schoolteacher and frustrated novelist Neil Clarke (Simon Pegg).

And so we return to Earth for the main story, and it’s one of the oldest we have: what would you do if you could do anything? It’s a story that of course comes with an implicit warning: be careful what you wish for, as Neil learns early when, being a bloke, he requests a predictable anatomical enhancement, the result of which renders him incapable of standing, let alone anything interesting.

As Neil slowly discovers, this power he has been granted is literal-minded and not a little perverse. This device perhaps wears a bit thin as we proceed, and it does expose some logical inconsistencies (if you can do absolutely anything, then there’s absolutely nothing you can’t immediately fix if you get it wrong the first time), but these are hardly deal-breakers in a film that features a talking terrier (more on him momentarily).

Neil is a very ordinary man. He lives alone in a dowdy flat with only his dog Dennis for company, is a little in love with his beautiful neighbour Catherine (Kate Beckinsale in a rare and welcome comic turn) and doesn’t much like his job, the doltish kid­s he teaches or the officious headmaster to whom he reports (a droll Eddie Izzard).

When he realises all he has to do is wish for something, wave his hand like HRH and it will be so, his first thoughts turn to balming such sore points in his life. Pegg, best known as the tech whiz Benji Dunn in the Mission: Impossible franchise, is well cast as the harried everyman who thinks he deserves better, and who ­probably does. Why shouldn’t he have a ­gorgeous girlfriend, the admiration of his students and respect of his boss, a horse running at Ascot, a dog with whom he can have intelligent conversations?

Yes, the last happens when Neil empowers Dennis with speech. The likable pooch (real name Mojo) is voiced by Robin Williams in what we are told is his final film role. If so it’s an appropriately zany codicil to a great comic career. The moment when Dennis stops barking and speaks, revealing the nature of his urgency, is priceless.

The plot develops with the arrival of an American military officer named Grant (Rob Riggle), who is obsessed with Catherine after a drunken night together that she’d rather forget. Grant, who boasts he invented “extreme rendition”, sees Neil as an obstacle that must be removed, preferably by force. Riggle, a former Marine Corps reservist who saw action in various trouble spots, is, well, convincing.

His presence allows the Pythons to indulge their fondness for poking fun at people from other countries, while also putting little Eng-land in its place. “Do you know who really runs the BBC?’’ Grant growls. There’s also a fun cameo by Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley as a book-hating, author-hating host of a television talk program about books and authors, a show that almost needless to say is wildly popular with the viewing public.

It’s all done with that sweeping, irreverent, socially aware humour that made the Pythons special. When Neil finally appreciates that perhaps he is being selfish and should use his powers for good, by eradicating world hunger and reversing global warming for example, the results suggest it may be a lot harder to fix our mistakes than we think, even in the unlikely event we start now. Jones’s inspiration for the film was HG Wells’s story The Man Who Could Work Miracles, a cautionary tale indeed.

Absolutely Anything is a comic treat, especially for those of us who grew up with the ­Pythons. It’s terrific to hear those unmistakable voices again. I think the M rating is mainly for an unnecessary scene in which Catherine and a friend talk crudely about Neil, which is a pity as otherwise the film would appeal to younger viewers, with its science-fiction elements and the delight in takes in unintended consequences. Not to mention that there’s a talking dog.

Absolutely Anything (M)

3.5 stars

National release from November 19