There's a very good reason this movie is so obscure: It's not great.Before you leap down my throat, let me assure you I'm a Monty Python fanatic and a Beatles fan. I love a good mock-biopic (I think "Dewey Cox" is about the best movie ever made).But those of us who turn to "The Rutles," expecting the kind of side-splitting laughter easily found in The Holy Grail, The Life of Brian, Spinal Tap, or Dewey Cox, are going to be pretty disappointed.Is the movie worth watching? Definitely. It's worth an hour of your time just to be amazed by the all-star cast ("Hey, was that John Belushi? Was that Bianca Jagger? Was that George Harrison?") It's really an astounding collection of 70s-era comedy and rock royalty.Additionally, it's worth watching because the music is so amazing. It's amazing how you can subtly combine, retool, and revamp the Beatles' songbook and come out with music that's very appealing in its own right.But in the end, the parody of the Beatles playing live and being all campy starts to wear a little thin, and you begin to see why this movie is so obscure. Go ahead and watch it, but keep your expectations in check.

I had the great pleasure to watch "All You Need Is Cash" last night at a Glasgow live music venue, where it was followed by a very enjoyable live performance by the band themselves, fronted by Neil Innes and still with John Halsey as the cuddly Barry (Ringo) Wom. Nice to not be the only Rutles fan around - in fact the real devotees were singing along and pre-empting dialogue like it was "The Rocky Horror Show". Cultdom indeed.Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this parody / homage to the Beatles as conceived by Python Eric Idle with the music provided by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's Neil Innes. Worked up from a brief sketch in an Idle BBC series, the story is I suppose fairly easily told, so well-known is the story of the most famous band ever. It's also fairly easy to spoof too and even if some of the jokes date back to when Sgt Pepper was a boy, there are plenty of laughs here.Idle gives himself the biggest part, not unnaturally, as the roving Whicker-esque reporter doing the narration and as Paul / Dirk in the band plus some other minor parts while there are effective cameos by a heavily disguised George Harrison, Paul Simon and Mick Jagger, the latter in particular in fine form. Blink and you might also miss fleeting appearances by most of the Saturday Night Live team of the time, not to mention Ronnie Wood and Michael Palin.The humour though wouldn't be strong enough to carry the show without Innes' quite superb pastiche music, with titles and arrangements instantly identifiable as Beatles take-offs but wholly enjoyable in their own right and in fact I believe the songs have dated far less than the comedy.It definitely helps your enjoyment if you're a longstanding Fab Four fan like me, but this sort of thing could very easily have gone wrong and it's a measure of the skill of Messrs Idle and in particular Innes that they get it so right. It certainly please pleased me.

This is not for the younger crowd (unless you are a big Beatle Fan) a very,VERY funny but affectionate spoof of Beatlemania insanity, it's not an actual spoof of the Beatles in fact it pays homage to their enormous talent, just the sleazy side of the music biz.The video and a lot of the jokes are a bit dated but although the costumes and re-creations of the original merchandise are really good the best thing about this parody is the AMAZING music, Neil Innes sounds just like John Lennon and their original songs sound exactly like the Beatles. The lyrics are hysterically funny and I think Lennon gets the worst of the ribbing especially on songs like "Cheese & Onions". George Harrison fully backed the project & makes a few small appearances and put up a lot of his own money to back the project.I used to play Rutles tracks at parties and night clubs and people thought they were bootleg or unreleased songs, I mean they really liked them.

The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978)This might be a necessary rite of passage for those who love the Beatles, or those who love "This is Spinal Tap" and other mockumentaries. Because this set the pattern, and a rather low bar of professionalism, for all that followed. It's not a great movie but it has great moments.Those moments include the extended interviews with Mick Jagger (and to a lesser extent Paul Simon). When each of these people first appear it's a thrill, when the reappear the surprise is gone and you realize the surprise is most of it. That the famous real stars were willing to get in on the gag is a great twist of fictional history.There are also other little snippets--not enough of them, but good ones, like Bill Murray being a crazy (typically) radio announcer, and an odd and overacted scene with John Belushi. Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner show up and so even does Bianca Jagger. These are quick and fun cameos, and the more of these the better.Central throughout is Eric Idle, the director and writer, and the one consistency in it all as the traveling reporting telling the documentary tale of the Pre-Fab Four. Some of the camera tricks are really funny, and the general dead pan delivery is good.All of this is great stuff and it's a lot, and if you could make a shorter mockumentary with the cream of the movie you'd have a pretty solid film. What drags it down is partly avoidable, party not: all the songs. We hear a good 15 or 20 Beatles-style homages or send-ups with these four mimics, and it's always interesting for ten seconds, hearing the slight twists to the famous riffs or melodies, seeing how they set the stage (with a little real footage now and then to make it even more real). But it wears thin after a minute, and sometimes the full three minutes is played out and it's just too long. And it happens a lot.It's a fun ride and if you can chill or chitchat during some of the drawn out parts you'll quickly be jerked into attention by some new twist.