Life of Brian
Brian Cohen is born in a stable a few doors from the one in which Jesus is born, a fact which initially confuses the three wise men who come to praise the future King of the Jews. They manage to put up with Brian's boorish mother Mandy until they realise their mistake. Brian grows up an idealistic young man who resents the continuing Roman occupation of Judea, even after learning his father was a Roman Centurion - Naughtius Maximus - who raped Brian's mother ("You mean; you were raped?", "Well, at first, yes"). While attending Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, he becomes infatuated with an attractive young female rebel, Judith. His desire for her and hatred for the Romans lead him to join the Peoples' Front of Judea (PFJ), one of many factious and bickering separatist movements who spend more time fighting each other than the Romans. The group's cynical leader Reg gives Brian his first assignment: He must scrawl some graffiti on the wall of the governor's palace. Just as he finishes doing this, he is confronted by a passing centurion who, in disgust at Brian's faulty Latin grammar ("Romanes eunt domus", or "the people called 'Romanes' they go the house"), forces him to write the grammatically correct message ("Romani ite domum" or "Romans, go home") 100 times. By dawn, the walls of the palace are covered in text. When the Roman guards change shift at daybreak, the new guards try to arrest Brian, but he manages to slip away with the help of Judith.
Brian then agrees to participate in a kidnapping plot by the resistance, which fails miserably (due to a clash with the Judean Peoples' Front, a rival separatist faction intent on the same mission) and forces him to go on the run again. This time, he doesn't evade capture and is summoned before Pontius Pilate. He tries to get away with it by claiming his Roman heritage, as the son of Naughtius Maximus. The captain of the guards refuses to believe the authenticity of the name. Pilate does not understand his doubt, to which the captain remarks that it would be like someone being named "Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus." Fortunately for Brian, the guards collapse into a giggling fit after an irate Pilate reveals that one of his best friends is a high-ranking centurion genuinely named Biggus Dickus (with a wife, Incontinentia Buttocks) and he makes his escape.
Following a series of misadventures (including a brief trip to outer space in an alien spaceship), the fugitive winds up in a lineup of wannabe mystics and prophets who harangue the passing crowd in a plaza. Forced to come up with something plausible in order to blend in and keep the guards off his back, he babbles pseudo-religious nonsense which quickly attracts a small but intrigued audience. Once the guards have left, Brian tries to put the episode behind him, but has unintentionally inspired a movement; he grows frantic when he finds that some people have started to follow him around (Man: "We have walked many miles to see you, oh great Messiah. What do you wish?" BRIAN: "Bugger off!"), with even the slightest unusual occurrence being hailed as a "miracle." After slipping away from the mob (who are busy persecuting a "heretic" - actually a hermit that Brian unwittingly disturbed) and spending the night with Judith, he opens the curtains the following morning to discover that an enormous mass of people, proclaiming him the Messiah, has formed outside his mother's house. Appalled, Brian is helpless to change the people's minds, as his every word and action are immediately seized as a point of doctrine. One such example is; BRIAN: "F*ck off!" / FOLLOWER: "How shall we f*ck off my lord?"
The hapless Brian cannot even find solace back at the PFJ's headquarters, where people fling their afflicted bodies at him demanding miracle cures. Reg even claims that he has booked a session at the Mount for him. After sneaking out the back, he is finally captured and scheduled to be crucified. Meanwhile, a huge crowd of natives has assembled outside the palace, spurred on by the general feeling in the community that Brian's fellow "prophets" have been exacerbating. Pilate (together with the visiting Biggus Dickus) tries to quell the feeling of revolution by granting them the decision on who should be pardoned. Instead, Pilate is just fed various names that begin with the letter R, intended to highlight his speech impediment. ("Vewy well. I shall welease Wodewick!") Biggus Dickus then attempts to take control of the situation by reading out the prisoner list, but the combination of his severe lisp and every prisoner having a name starting with S (e.g. Samson the Sadducee Strangler) causes the assembled hordes to collapse to the ground in laughter.
Pilate eventually orders Brian's release, but (in a moment parodying the climax of the film Spartacus), various crucified people all claim to be "Brian of Nazareth" - one man stating "I'm Brian and so's my wife" - and the wrong man is released. Various other opportunities for a reprieve for Brian are denied as one by one his "allies" (including Judith) step forward to explain why they are leaving the "noble freedom fighter" hanging in the hot sun. Condemned to a long and painful death, Brian's spirits are lifted by his fellow sufferers, who break out into song with "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
