I was rather surprised how many people lauded Eric Idle's performance of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life in the Olympic Closing Ceremonies. I don't dislike it myself (and took childish delight in the fact that Eric used the word "shit" in the Olympics), but I always figured it had reached the status of cliché. It seemed liked it was hamming it up and expecting people to be delighted with it like a 12-year-old who has just learned to say "NI!" If I'd been in on the planning and someone had brought up the idea of including Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, my response would have been "The audience will never go for it. They'll just roll their eyes." But my entire Twitter feed and all the media coverage I saw were unanimously delighted.
I felt the same about the use of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life in Spamalot - and about Spamalot in general, actually. I went into Spamalot expecting a pastiche of Python that will make us smile and nod in familiarity, and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was genuinely entertaining in and of itself, to hardened Python fans and Python newbies alike.
So it seems I think the general public has a higher threshold of entertainment than it actually does. Not sure what to do with that.
Although I still think the Olympics should have ended with the giant foot.
1 comment:
To have the giant foot you would also have to contaminate the all-British soundtrack with Sousa's Liberty Bell.
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