I recently purchased “The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch” on DVD. Long story short: not worth the money to buy, and might not even merit a rental, even if you’re a Rutles fan like me.

I loved the original Rutles movie, “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash“. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a mockumentary by Eric Idle about the “Pre-Fab Four”, The Rutles. It’s a sendup of the Beatles, obviously, chronicling a band whose experiences are very similar to those of the real Liverpudlians. Filled with cameos by Saturday Night Live members (who, at the time, weren’t famous; Bill Murray even goes by his real name!) and rock stars of the era who reminisce about the Rutles, it is a hoot. I find it hilarious even though I was born when the Beatles broke up and don’t know much about them; I can’t imagine how funny it must be for those who love the Beatles.

When the surviving Beatles released their “Beatles: Anthology” album, Neil Innes (the musical force behind the Rutles) came up with “Rutles: Archaeology”, an amusing album of more Beatles-esque songs.

So Eric Idle puts together “The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch”, another documentary about The Rutles using these new songs and new interviews plus clips from the earlier documentary as well as unused footage he’d salvaged.

The only funny bits in this film are the interviews with new stars reminiscing about the Rutles, and even those are mostly awful. (Oh no, Robin Williams is doing schtick again!) Bonnie Raitt has a few laughs, and Billy Connolly steals the show by bad-mouthing the Rutles at every opportunity. Tom Hanks does a boffo improv job; I’m guessing he’s a big fan of the original documentary. As a reward for his performance, Tom Hanks, the biggest star in Hollywood many times running, is not mentioned on the box.

Know who is? Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy “comedy that’s flat as day-old Coke” Fallon! Fallon does an imitation of Eric Idle as he grabs the microphone away for his own documentary, which amazingly enough manages to steal from TWO classic Monty Python routines at once!

It’s all just a pale imitation of the earlier mockumentary, with the interviewees making endless references to the tight trousers. I’m guessing that most everyone here volunteered because they were fans of “All You Need Is Cash” and now 20 years later they get to relive the old jokes they loved, but the result is that they don’t really add anything new to the show.

And as I said, the interviews are the only funny part!

The rest of the mockumentary is made up of the aforementioned “unused footage”, and that’s it. Still, is that so bad? Maybe this unused footage is because there were tons of improv bits left on the cutting room floor just because of the limits of time, right?

Nah. It’s on the floor because it isn’t funny. In fact, most of this “unused footage” is just different camera angles of exactly what you saw the first time! Eric Idle retells the history of the Rutles pretty much as it was in the first movie, but without the jokes and edited slightly differently. It’s an atrocious ripoff.

Eric Idle doesn’t even bother dressing up as Dirk McQuickly of 2002 (which wouldn’t be in bad taste since his Beatle-equivalent, Paul McCartney, is still alive). You would think that a Rutles documentary made a quarter century after the first one would have SOME new material about what the Rutles members did up to 2002! Granted, John Lennon was assassinated, but a good satirist should be able to do something with that in the same way that they worked with the suicide of the Beatles manager in the first movie.

Taste isn’t really the problem; I think it would have just been much more effort than they wanted to do. This is a really cheap effort made entirely of fixed camera interviews, some one-man comedy by Idle and a rehash of the original movie. Don’t bother.

If you’re still determined to see it, e-mail me. I have a copy to sell.