Interesting short about assurance company workers who rise up to mutiny against their superiors and then suddenly transform their office structure into a pirate ship and start to sail away on the financial seas. After a great triumph against the financial giants they meet an unsuspecting end. Terry Gilliam wrote and directed this piece that was actually a short feature that was featured before the actual feature in the Monty Python movie: The Meaning of Life as a kind of warm-up. Truly one of the best sketches in the movie and an interesting peek to the earlier works of Terry Gilliam before he went on doing more independent projects like Brazil. He's original talent can be seen here very powerfully.Interesting note: Gilliam originally visioned this to be an animation but being already bored with animating, he decided to make it in live-action and it possibly turned out to be more expensive than the rest of the film and went way over the budget.

I hadn't seen "Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life'" since it first came out, way back when I was still in high school, so it was with mildly delighted anticipation that I popped in the new Special Edition DVD into my player the other day. Boy, did I waste $15.00! I barely made it to the midway part of the feature ("Where are you, fishy?"), but I almost didn't even make it to the opening credits, thanks to this worthless trifle of an utterly insipid, humor-free ball of whimsy-snot. If one needs proof of the axiom that animators make lousy live-action film directors (Frank Tashlin, Tim Burton, Ralph Bakshi, et. al.), here is yet more. Terry Gilliam, get thee back behind an animator's desk and out from behind a camera!

This short is from the Monty Pyhton's and that is pretty obvious. It is funny, strange, well made, interesting and very imaginative. The story has something to say and it is good satire considering the time it was made.This short is about an uprising by the elderly workers against the corporate young men who treat them like garbage. Their building turns into some kind of pirate ship and they prepare for battle with the corporate world.With lots of humor, a fine production design and a typical Monty Python ending this is a very good short film.

Originally intended to be part of the body of "The Meaning of Life," Gilliam's loony story about pirate accountants was found to go on too long and tended to overpower the rest of the film, so it was excised and made into a separate short subject. This was probably for the best since it has a strikingly different tone from what the rest of the Pythons were doing.Gilliam's visual sense, as always, is a marvel to watch, and his attention to detail is stunning. Watch for his cameo -- along with Michael Palin -- when the CPA attacks its first competitor. And Gilliam regular Myrtle Devenish -- who was Beryl in "Time Bandits" and Jack Lint's secretary in "Brazil" -- also puts in a welcome appearance."Weigh the anchor."