denis888 Hilarious! This is the very word to describe this absolutely delightful Beatles-parody movie, with excellent roles played by all people involved, with Neil Innes, Ricky Fataar and Eric Idles being all-time great! Heavy British accents, funny hapless manners, excellent humor, clever wordplay, smashing gags, funny skits and deliciously delightful songs all form a heavy stew which is tasty, smells excellent, breaks mightily and provides a sheer 90-minute joy for watchers. This is a highly recommended movie for all Beatles fans who will immediately recognize all the familiar hints and innuendos. Allusions are very smart and the jokes are sometimes a bit too heavy but still zany and hefty. Even if you are not a Beatles fan, you can deeply enjoy Monty Python humor here, too. Fresh, breezy, fast, funny, often risky - this is a tremendously satisfying film for all people

MartinHafer I think that your age will most likely strongly affect what you think of this film. If you grew up during the era of the Beatles, then I am pretty sure you'll appreciate what they've created in "The Rutles". However, I think younger generations will just look at it and wonder what they are missing. As for me, I don't quite fall in either group. The group broke up when I was 7 and I never really was caught up in the whole Beatlemania but I still could understand the many Beatle-like references in the film."The Rutles" is a mockumentary--one that debuted well before the more recent spate of such films. And as a fake documentary it's much more the style that tries to imitate the original--and it does a great job of creating the look and sound of the Beatles in the fictional group The Rutles. But if you are looking for laughs, this does not appear to be the main purpose--it's more imitation and a homage to the original instead of a laugh out loud film. This isn't a criticism--more just an observation of the overall effect.The main force behind this project were apparently Eric Idle (who plays three different roles) and Neil Innes. Idle was pretty much what you'd expect. I was very impressed by Innes, as I know he was the musical mind behind the film and his John Lennon-like character was spot-on. In addition to these two, the film was blessed to have the cooperation of various celebrities (though some of the cameos were pretty unimpressive--especially those by most of the Saturday Night Live alumni who just seemed a bit wasted). Of note are the many times you see Mick Jagger, a nice cameo by George Harrison as well as Ron Wood).As I said above, whether you'll like this probably has a lot to do with when you grew up, as younger crowds won't get the many Beatles references and much older audiences will probably want to turn it off and listen to some Sinatra music! For me, it was worth a look but didn't change my life. Very clever...but not full of a lot of big laughs.

pbbuffyhugs Absolutely hilarious spoof of The Beatles. Eric Idle's finest 70 minutes and a spin off of his mid 70's TV show "Rutland Weekend Television" (Please BBC repeat this series). The songs are so clever - "I Must Be In Love' could've been an actual Beatles single it's that good. Neil Innes wrote the soundtrack which was deemed so good it was released as an album and 2 singles were released in the UK. The film follows so closely the actual events of the Beatles and George Harrison was so impressed with the script that he agreed to appear in the film. "Piggy in the Middle" (with absolutely spot on John Lennon-esq lyrics) perfectly recreates "Magical Mystery Tour" or in this case "Tragical History Tour" and the Yellow Submarine cartoon section looks so damn good that it will have you looking out for it next time you watch that film. "Love Life" is a perfect recreation of the television event of 1967 and by this point Neil Innes looks and sounds exactly like John Lennon. Everything is covered here, Lennons infamous "Bigger than Jesus" quote and it even mocks Apple (a pealed banana.) My favourite bit is Eric Idle tracing the musical roots of the Rutles, talking to 'Blind Lemon Pie' and finding out he should be talking to the bloke next door is one of the funniest few minutes of film I've seen - especially when he goes round there... "He's lying, he's always lying. Last week he said he invented the Everly Brothers." It's pant-wettingly funny. Regarded as a cult item now this is right up there with Spinal Tap but this is so much funnier, if you love the Beatles (who doesn't?) then you need to see this, one of the cleverest and most affectionate spoofs ever made. Buy the album too - for a parody the songs are superb.

Tommy Nelson The Rutles was a band in the 60s with members Dirk McQuickly, Ron Nasty, Stig O'Hara and Barry Womb (formerly Barry Womble), and 8 years after the breakup of this "band" this documentary is made. This is actually a very funny movie, but won't appeal to everyone.The thing that stood out most in this movie was how accurate the movie and song parodies were. If you've seen the Beatles films or know the songs that these songs are based on, then you'll find it funny, or if nothing else amusing. Other than the music, there is also a surprisingly amount of hilarious Monty Python like humor from Eric Idle as the interviewer. The only real problem I had with the film was the special guest stars. They tried to fit guests in, and usually they had to extend out cameos that worked better as 20 second roles, which ended up becoming 2 minutes just to give well known people a role. Many members of SNL, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, and even George Harrison have small roles. Some of them were unneeded, but nonetheless it was nice to see familiar faces.So sit down with a cup of tea and check this one out.My rating: *** out of ****. 70 mins. Not rated, contains mild language.