The Meaning of Life plays like 3 episodes of Flying Circus, but without the rough edges and unparallelled silliness. Starting off with a 15 minute short film (which screams of Gilliam) containing few laughs but some thoughtful amusement, the Meaning of Life soon delves into lowbrow humor the likes that Python had, and should never have sunk to.
The film is divided into 6 sections, all a relevent section of life (birth, puberty, death etc). Each section contains 1 to 4 skits, and are connected internally by transition sketches. The only connection outside is the fact that they are labelled as sections of the same movie. The content ranges from a silly hospital staff, to a (rather large) family singing about the greatness of sperm, to the boardroom of the only corporation in the world, to a fat man vomiting, eating, then exploding.
Amusing, boring and disgusting are all general terms to describe the Meaning of Life. I think highly disappointing is the best description. This film shows that after about a 10 year absence from working steadily together, the Python clan lost their groove, and couldn't get it back.