Monty Python Proves It Again: Laughter Gives Meaning to Life

“You might find that you need to loosen up and stop being such a lamentable crab. In fact, you might be in real need of therapy. Don’t be too proud to turn to your computer. It’s there. It’s listening. It’s ready to help.”

The wisecracker who wrote that in the latest Monty Python CD-ROM manual was on to something. Though computers have often brought out the worst in us, there are times when we should throw our troubles to the wind and laugh. And not the cynical laugh of a person whose hard drive crashed, losing every piece of work done in the last four years. No, the laugh of a good joke, foolish parody or a delightfully bad old movie.

The laughs are in abundance in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (7th Level/Panasonic; $50; PC), the third computer game installment from the Pythonites. Based loosely on the 1983 movie, the game allows you to jump from one meaningful part of life (“Fighting Each Other”) to another (“Death”), collecting important items and generally making a fool of yourself.

The big “innovation” in this title is the patented Surround-O-Vision, allowing you to rotate each scene in a 360-degree circle. More delightful is the animation, with characters’ mouths popping open and shut like marionettes’. Who needs video when you can have 19th century-style digital puppets? As with all Python projects, the Meaning of Life is heavy on disjointed, psychedelic cartoons, with fish swimming through church windows and heads popping off of choir boys.

After so many movies and so many computer games, the breast and fart jokes can get tired. Fortunately the crafty Python troupe livens up the CD-ROM at surprising junctures, with a hilarious trouble-shooting guide and a wonderfully politically incorrect disclaimer at the game’s start.

For those with a predisposition toward geek humor, there’s Microshaft Winblows 98 (Parroty; $20; Mac or PC), another in a long line of parody CD-ROMs from the company that brought us Star Warped and X-Fools. Like those titles, Winblows delivers a bundle of cheap laughs at a pretty cheap price. The CD basically gives you a Windows 95 look-alike desktop, with spoof features like a Reject Bin, Winblows Exploder and a “Start Already” button.

Much of the humor is aimed at Bill Gates and Microsoft and is in the obvious vein of spoiled-rich-nerd jokes. But Winblows has some nuggets of hilarity that make it all worthwhile: a board game you play as Gates or Steve Jobs and “CampusCams” that show Microsoft programmers confused at the site of Stairmasters or tech support getting calls from physicist Steven Hawking.

For more humor, check out Movioke! (Bandai; $30; Mac or PC), a party game that lets you insert your own lines into classic B-movies like “Planet of Blood” or “Glen or Glenda.” Dennis Miller hosts and even fills in a few ad-lib lines to help spark your ideas. After hitting Record, you follow the video and a script, and when your line comes up, you say it into a microphone. The funny part is thinking up new lines, making it almost a home version of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

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Mark Glaser is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and critic. You can reach him at glaze@sprintmail.com.