In Yorkshire, a Roman Catholic man is made redundant from his job, and informs his numerous children that he must sell them for scientific experiments ("Every Sperm Is Sacred").

"Middle Age" involves an American couple visiting a Hawaiian restaurant with a medieval torture theme, where, to the interest of the fish, the waiter offers a conversation about philosophy and the meaning of life.

His wife is reluctant to donate her liver, but she relents after a man steps out of a refrigerator and reminds her of humanity's insignificance in the universe ("Galaxy Song").

"Death" features a condemned man choosing the manner of his own execution: being chased off the Cliffs of Dover by topless women in sports gear and falling into his own grave below.

A wide variety of locations were used, such as Porchester Hall in Queensway for the Mr Creosote sketch, where hundreds of pounds of fake vomit had to be cleaned up on the last day due to a wedding being scheduled hours later.

The Malham Moors were chosen for the Grim Reaper segment; the countryside near Strathblane was used for the Zulu War; and "Every Sperm Is Sacred" was shot in Colne, Lancashire, with interiors done at Elstree Studios.

This allowed for large-scale choreography and crowd sequences, a more lavishly produced soundtrack that included new original songs, and much more time able to be spent on each sketch, especially The Crimson Permanent Assurance.

[3] According to Palin, the organ transplant scene harked back to Python's love of bureaucracy, and sketches with lots of people coming round from the council with different bits of paper.

[3] During the filming of the scene where Palin's character explains Catholicism to his children, his line was "that rubber thing at the end of my sock", which was later overdubbed with cock.

The short was intended as an animated sequence in the feature,[8] for placement at the end of Part V.[9] Gilliam persuaded the other members of Monty Python to allow him to produce and direct it as a live action piece instead.

In an April 2012 re-release held by the American Film Institute, the tagline is altered to read "It took God six days to create the Heavens and the Earth, and Monty Python just 1 hour and 48 minutes to screw it up".

[15] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four, calling it a "a barbed, uncompromising attack on generally observed community standards".

"[18] Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was full of "raunchy talk, blasphemy (well, sacrilege) and one example of what kids call a totally gnarly, gross-out scene.

"[19] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, writing that "The strongest impressions left by this picture have less to do with its largely tedious attempts to burlesque human weakness and pomposity than with the group's failure to evolve a coherent satiric outlook.

"[21] In 2004, acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino once stated "The only time I've ever had to look away, because I couldn't bear to watch, was The Meaning of Life, when that fat b***ard keeps being sick.

[24] In his 2015 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin awarded it three stars, calling it "A barrel of bellylaughs", identifying the Mr. Creosote and "Every Sperm Is Sacred" sketches as the most memorable.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Monty Python's the Meaning of Life is rude, ribald, and unafraid to take comedic risks – which is to say it should more than satisfy fans of the titular troupe.

[29] While the Cannes jury, led by William Styron, were fiercely split on their opinions on several films in competition, The Meaning of Life had general support, securing it the second-highest honour after the Palme d'Or for The Ballad of Narayama.

[30] At the 37th British Academy Film Awards, Andre Jacquemin, Dave Howman, Michael Palin and Terry Jones were also nominated for Original Song for "Every Sperm is Sacred."

[31] A two-disc DVD release in 2003 features a documentary on production and a director's cut,[32] which adds deleted scenes into the film, making it 116 minutes.