Meetings Bloody Meetings training movie

Today I'd like to write a little bit about a very popular training movie that focuses on business meetings. Meetings Bloody Meetings is a movie starring John Cleese of Monty Python fame. Cleese has launched an extremely successful and highly entertaining line of training movies over the last few decades. While I remain a big fan of both his cinematic productions and his training movies this one is growing long in the tooth.

First of all, I would like to point out that the shelf life for a training movie is rarely longer than ten years. Fifteen years is definitely pushing it and few products are effective when the hair and clothing are more interesting to the audience than the content. Exceptions exist (see: the Sid Story) but by and large- and I say this as a Generation X'er- antiquated training movies can end up being the butt of a joke rather than the helpful tool you thought you invested in.

I enjoy the message in Meetings Bloody Meetings. The importance of inviting the right people, starting on time, sticking with the agenda and keeping order are very valid points and are presented in a humorous and clever way. The movie fails in it's length (thirty minutes) and the grainy, early eighties video and sound production.

I realize I'm not being particularly fair by basing my critique of this squarely on it's age but compared to the newer movies made by Cleese that focus on the same topics this is old-hat. Nonetheless, Cleese made a winner and that is apparent in it's seemingly unending popularity.

To find out more about this training movie please click this link.