The Rutles: All You Need is Cash

At last, I got around to watching the original band documentary parody film, the precursor to This is Spinal Tap and another step along the way of reminiscing about The Bonzos. In 1975, Eric Idle of Monty Python and Neil Innes of the Bonzos got together for a sketch parodying the Beatles. The skits made the transitions to Idle’s appearances on Saturday Night Live, and then in 1978 this feature film followed, and despite an iffy start has endured as a bit of a cult classic – though of course, Spinal Tap does pretty much everything this does, but better: by parodying a whole movement rather than an individual band, it’s more affectionate and gets laughs because you know there will be people who actually believe it, and it’s just got bigger laughs. 

All You Need is Cash starts awkwardly, with Eric Idle’s usual trying-too-hard way of trying to inject laughs into straight exposition casting away all possibility of veracity without actually being very funny. The parody of the early Beatles are obvious and predictable, though the music – aping a general style rather than individual songs – are clever. Fortunately, it gets a lot better as it goes on, with big laughs in the reporter’s trip to New Orleans, Dirk’s highly awkward marriage and the brilliant scene where George Harrison (as an interviewer) asks Michael Palin (as the Rutle Corp.’s spokesperson) about problems with people stealing things while an increasingly outlandish succession of items is wheeled out behind them. There are brilliant moments in the interviews with Mick Jagger and great little cameos from Ron Wood, Roger McGough and the biggest names from SNL – Aykroyd, Belushi and Murray. It also has a brilliant parody of the Yellow Submarine animation and expertly skewers the Maharishi in a surreal way. I also had a fit of giggles to the ‘Ouch!’ video, even though it was the lowest and most politically incorrect form of humour. Neil Innes’ Lennon impression also develops into a thing of great brilliance, both in his spoken impression (like the shower sit-in) and especially in the music – ‘Cheese and Onions’ is a marvel of pinpoint accuracy.

While it’s great that it was released early enough that John Lennon could appreciate it and fixed on what were relatively recent events, I had to cringe at how it treated Brian Epstein, no matter how vilified he has been. I know over a decade is much too long to cry ‘too soon!’ but the humour aimed at him went from gentle teasing – the awkward interview where it was suggested all he liked about the Beatles was how tight their trousers were – to jibes at his being Jewish (his book here being ‘A Cellar Full of Goys’), but mostly I didn’t like the humour extracted from the Rutles’ awkward reaction to his death (or, here, his moving to Australia). It all seemed too cruel to be amusing.

Overall, though, I feel like All You Need is Cash is under-appreciated. It’s not as good as Spinal Tap, but almost everyone who loves that film would really enjoy this one, too. But it seems to me it doesn’t get much of a look in. And that’s a shame.