Better than most people think

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

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.

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.

I remember watching the NBC broadcast debut of "The Rutles: All You Need is Cash," during the spring of 1978. Even though it was highly promoted that week, and featured cameos by Lorne Michaels and nearly every member of the red-hot Not Ready for Prime Time Players, ratings for the special were abysmal, possibly even the very bottom of the Nielsen list. People I talked to had absolutely no idea what to make of it at all. Go figure. This wonderful piece, which grows better with further perspective on the 60's (and Beatlemania), paved the way for fake documentary genre pioneers, "Zelig," and "Spinal Tap," and fortunately found an audience through home video. Even though "The Rutles" is very much an Eric Idle project, it is often overlooked that this film was largely directed by Gary Weis, who was responsible for the wonderful, ground-breaking short films that appeared on the early episodes of "Saturday Night Live." Hats off to Neil Innes, whose songs and arrangements were absolutely dead-on, not just musically, but technically correct in every detail as they evolved through the Beatles chronology.

A very clever film, but watching it again all these years later it seems a bit strained. Many of the jokes are pretty poor and the Python influence is very noticeable, but it is saved by the music and Mick Jagger's extremely natural 'interview'. The music was written by Neil Innes of the Bonzos, and he has perfectly captured the Lennon/McCartney style, so much so that some of the songs sound more like the Beatles than the Beatles ever did! To get the most out of this film, it is necessary to have a knowledge of the real story of the Beatles - their rise from the Cavern and the Bier Kellars of Germany to international stardom, their conquest of America, the 'God' incident, the Apple fiasco etc, and then you can watch the film with a knowing grin while you enjoy the music. All in all great fun, but you'll have to wear your 1978 head while you watch it.