John Cleese; is he funny?

was this dinner theater in Youngstown?

I only saw a couple of episodes, but the sitcom he did with Alison Steadman a couple of years ago wasn’t the long awaited return to form.

Xp Alfred Close, it was a fancy theater in my upstate ny town. it was billed as a one-man show/monologue thing, presented as a kind of ted talk format with slides, lots of him talking about popular social science books that he'd recently read, really strange. We were expecting something super halfassed like you usually get with old showbiz lions doing shows like this & would have been fine with that, just kind of wanted to see him live before he croaks, but was not expecting all the racial stuff. (He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?) Also lots of pandering anti-Trump jokes, but then he seemed totally unaware that his routine about how Mexicans are invading the US could have been lifted straight from a MAGA rally. Just a really bizarre night.

He’s been like it for ages

the early funny stuff was largely written by others but he did have a good bodyshape for physical comedy once upon a time

fawlty towers was a documentary

I use to piss myself watching this bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqJzCG9qr0

"He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?"

lolled at reading this, so I guess that makes it a form of comedy - but i don't think i'd listening to it 1st hand would have had the same effect

Haha yes true, i did spend the whole show confused and baffled with no idea of where things were going to go next from moment to surreal moment, so in that sense it could be located within a grand python tradition

so, the trend I'm seeing in these answers would be "is funny? no. was funny? yes.".

It’s been, what, 30 years since he was even a bit funny? Closer to 40?

A Fish Called Wanda was his last successful fling at funny. Calculate from there.

Fierce Creatures had its moments iirc

a fish called wanda hasn't been funny for more than 30 years

& it’s probably about 10 years since I first noticed him popping up to do weird morrissey-style interviews about how England isn’t England anymore cause all the foreigns are doing white genocide by existing

He is *terrible* at Twitter

Re Waitrose ducklings...

I've been digging, and have discovered that the family who first made chocolate in the 15th century, chose to produce white,dark and milk chocolate in order to stir up racial disharmony. They especially abhorred chocolate-coloured people

Apology......

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) April 10, 2019

A post that has always stuck with me from this Monty Python thread:

Maybe six or seven years ago, I heard an interview with Cleese in which he more or less said he felt he'd lost his edge in terms of humor. What he said was kind of sad and the gist of it has stayed with me since then, something VERY loosely along the lines of "When you're young, you notice all these little inconsistencies in the world, things that aren't quite right, people who don't quite seem to know what they're doing, and you can derive humor from that. But when you get older, you start to realize that nothing is really right at all, that no one has any idea what they're doing, and then it stops seeming as funny."

^^^ funny man

he spent the 90s doing corporate video work which was (a) almost certainly not even slightly funny, but (b) possibly a tiny step up* from what they were going to get if he hadn't been in the video

*up as in:
"this is great, john cleese is hilarious!"
*later, uncertainly*
"i must have enjoyed that lots, john cleese was in it!"
narrator's voice (etc)

think cleese has always been the python most likely to be awful in old age

doesnt come across great in palin diaries, and palin is a v kind observer

but hes 80. yknow.

People who avoid a slow entropic slide into human turdburgerdom in their dotage should get some kind of medal, maybe.

a fish called wanda hasn't been funny for more than 30 years

I'm sorry they did that to you, Wanda.

Lol, thanks

Aristotle was not Belgian.

It's said he was a bugger for the bottle though.

A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it

looking at you, Kevin Kline w/ ridiculous moustache

I love it. Cleese is a believable romantic lead too.

it seems polarising, and I have time for other Cleese vehicles e.g. Clockwise

Finest moment imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUWj8PVRF70

Miss Piggy's stunt double steals his thunder imo

he spent the 90s doing corporate video work

As someone who has had to sit through a number of these training videos, I can confirm that they're mildly amusing in places at best. 'Liable to raise a wry smile every few minutes' would be a generous summary.
Basically like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UFNCrxWI2M

He'd been doing those since the 70s fwiw.

The main advantage of these training videos was that Cleese could present to camera without looking awkward like so many Open University lecturers. Here's a good example (although again not from one of the training videos):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bDIxI8HV8g

He was in some embarrassing Sainsbury’s ads in the 90s

I remember a Derek & Clive bit about a public info ad where he told ppl how to send a letter “he said put a stamp and address on, that’s what I’ve been doing since I watched those fucking ads”. So even his contemporaries held him in contempt going way back

"A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it"

what an incredibly strange opinion

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ecJvyvh_Ics/maxresdefault.jpg

He was always a bit of a hack, wasn't he? Even during the height of Python he and Chapman were writing for The Two Ronnies and Doctor in the House (although he did ditch Python first, which I suppose wasn't hackish).
How many comedians have still got it after the age of *plucks at random* 65?

Eight

JUST ANNOUNCED: @MelBrooks On Broadway at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on June 17 + 18! Tickets are on sale tomorrow 4/23 at 10am.

Get more info here: https://t.co/ZUE965yUoW pic.twitter.com/1bAM8iaLOz

— In Residence On Broadway (@inresidencebdwy) April 22, 2019

As has been pointed out, Cleese was finished well before he was 65.

Mel Brooks is entertaining if not funny in public speaking situations at age 90+, which puts him ahead of nearly all of his films

I saw Clockwise as a kid in the cinema. A much superior movie than Cannon + Ball's Boys In Blue in terms of production and writing obv.. but seriously lacking a chortle as funny as when Bobby Ball jumps chest first onto a cowpat.

https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/spaceballs-alien-gif-10.gif

All the Pythons seem to have been in agreement that Cleese was a colossal soft-Tory arsehole his entire life, but very funny and a very hard worker. He combined the deep vein of superiority with his sense for funny in public appearances through the '90s, but Wanda was definitely his last hurrah at writing, aged 45.

(also nb the only solo writing he ever did was probably a few episodes of Doctor At Large in 1971, and possibly his 2014 autobiography:

It’s just that the overall tone of the book is cross and churlish, the story of his life rendered in the voice of an ornery old man who never made it in showbusiness rather than the fully realised genius behind comedies of such towering brilliance as Fawlty Towers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Life of Brian.

"A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it"

what an incredibly strange opinion

― akm, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you... think it's a funny film? that's cool, each to their own, it's just not for me

He was always a bit of a hack, wasn't he? Even during the height of Python he and Chapman were writing for The Two Ronnies and Doctor in the House (although he did ditch Python first, which I suppose wasn't hackish).
How many comedians have still got it after the age of *plucks at random* 65?

― fetter, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And Les Dawson.

Who is a genius, tbf..

at least through Young Frankenstein, Mel's films get big laughs when seen properly with a theater audience.

Fawlty is still one of the funniest sitcoms ever, maybe dial back the hate just a tad.

a daughter he has just discovered he had

This shows such a lack of understanding of the character of Basil Fawlty that it surely proves Connie Booth was the creative force behind the original series.

it surely reaffirms the long-proven fact that etc

Well, yes.

weird that rob reiner is producing it given his history with liberal causes

Americans aren't interested in the political views of British people.

Rob Reiner also has a history with Archie Bunker, so maybe that’s the spirit in which he’s producing this.

I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation,. Apparently Cleese has cut the song. Of course. https://t.co/OS1X9b5w2k

— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) May 19, 2023

I guess this answers the question posted in the thread title: cleese now aggressively anti-funny

surely Cleese must be cutting out Idle's Stan/Loretta scene as well.

Nah, probably extending it and having the characters address the audience with "this is what the wokerati actually believe now!" afterwards.

Exactly.

i'll say again if you had told me 30 years ago that I would like Idle more than Cleese I would have really doubted you.