It stars Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Rob Riggle, Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley, with the nonhuman characters' voices provided by John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Jones, Michael Palin and Robin Williams.
The chosen human is Neil Clarke, a teacher struggling under Headmaster Mr Robinson at a school in London.
Next day he wishes for another teacher, Miss Pringle, to worship his friend Ray, who is too shy to tell her he likes her.
Neil uses his power for petty personal gains and to give his dog Dennis the ability to speak.
Grant kidnaps Neil, tying him up and gagging him to prevent his escape, and then forces him to grant some selfish or absurd wishes (such as giving all pasty-white English people huge ears and duck feet and giving police pink uniforms), threatening to shoot Dennis.
He only realizes he has this after saying "I'd make an alien spaceship hit class 10C and vaporize them" to a colleague, only to hear an explosion elsewhere in the school and find 10C's classroom destroyed.
[10] Jones credited the film's idea to the H. G. Wells story "The Man Who Could Work Miracles", but said that it "just changed out of all recognition from that".
But I wrote it with Gavin Scott, and we've been writing it for 20 years, then Mike Medavoy rang up in 2010 or so and asked what scripts I had hidden in my bottom desk drawer.
Before Douglas Adams died, he looked over the script and he said that Dennis the Dog's scenes were the funniest scenes..."[10] He also spoke about the designs of the alien characters, saying: "James Acheson is doing the costumes, and he has already got a wonderful array of aliens of different sizes and shapes.
[8] Australian singer Kylie Minogue recorded and released a promotional single, "Absolutely Anything and Anything at All", for the soundtrack.
Its consensus states "Given the impressive array of talent involved in Absolutely Anything—and the near-total lack of laughs it provokes—this Monty Python reunion can only be regarded as a disappointment".
[22] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the film 1/5 star, and said "cheap and cheerless sci-fi comedy.
There’s a blue-chip cast here, and it’s directed by Terry Jones; the Pythons have cameos, as creepy alien creatures.
But this low-budget Brit film is just depressing, a sub-Douglas Adams sci-fi comedy which looks like mediocre kids’ TV with a dismal script and cheap’n’cheerless production values.
"[23] James Mottram of The List also awarded the film 1 star, and said "Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale head up an awful sci-fi comedy from Terry Jones.