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Life of Brian is essentially a classic farce and is eloquently summed up by Brian's mother (played by Terry Jones) saying, "He's not the messiah; he's a very naughty boy". This notwithstanding, the film is variously seen as a critique of excessive religiosity, a satire depicting organised and popular religion as a racket involving hypocrisy and zealotry, a sacrilegious film "deserving censorship", or just a very funny movie.
It also pokes fun at revolutionary groups by featuring several factions that are nominally protesting against the Roman occupation of Judea, but are in fact more at loggerheads with one another (examples include 'The Judean People's Front', 'The People's Front of Judea', and (with only one member) 'The Judean Popular People's Front')[1]. According to the DVD commentary, this part of the story is a satire on the multiplication of ineffectual left-wing parties in Britain in the 1970s. These revolutionary groups would splinter every few weeks and would be angrier at each other than they were at the British government.
The film contains all members of Monty Python in multiple roles, and also features cameos by Spike Milligan (who happened to be on holiday in Tunisia where the filming was taking place), and George Harrison (without whom the film would not have been made — since Harrison set up Handmade Films to help fund it after the subject matter scared off the original backers, EMI). Chris Langham also appears as a centurion.
Either by accident or design, several characters are never named during the film, although they do have names which are used in the tracklisting for the soundtrack album and elsewhere. There is no mention of the fact that Eric Idle's ever-cheerful joker is called "Mr. Cheeky", that the terribly well-meaning Roman guard played by Michael Palin is (aptly) named "Nisus Wettus", or that Brian's mother (Terry Jones) is named "Mandy".
The movie's critical moment seems to be when Brian speaks to a large crowd of his followers:
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for yourselves! You're ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
The Crowd: Shhhh!
I think all Islamist's should be made to watch this movie, I don't recall christians rising up and demanding Cleese and company be beheaded for blaspheme.....and this was in 1979, there is some reading on this... IMHO, this movie sums it all up....(I still think the hermit is the real messiah.... ;) ) 