MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

REVIEWED BY JENNY SAWYER

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: thematic elements, innuendo, crude humor

Rated:

It's The Princess Bride meets First Knight (without the romance of either): a highly random, low-budget masterpiece of a movie built out of four parts sarcasm, six parts sheer insanity, and ten parts brilliance. It's Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the result of a collaboration of the best British humorists, a few historical facts, and super-cheesy animation. Although its sarcasm proves a line out of the movie, "nothing is sacred [i.e., out of the realms of mockery]," and should be taken with a grain of salt, it's easy to cut back and laugh for an hour and a half if you enjoy British humor and a lighthearted, entirely unromantic movie.

Follow Arthur, King of the Britons, as he assembles his mighty band of extremely dense (but marvelously valiant) knights and receives a quest from God -- a search for the Holy Grail, the chalice that Jesus drank out of during the Last Supper. The road to the Holy Grail is rocky, however, and paved with many perilous adventures involving coconuts, sparrows, flying farm animals, killer rabbits, and shrubbery, just to name a few, as the knights quest first together and then individually after the prize. The entire journey is laughable -- the audience never knows just what twists and turns their latest ideas will take, just where the random cartoons interspersed throughout the film will spin into error, and (as an added bonus) an intriguing on-the-set murder investigation transpiring right alongside the plot to find out just WHO it was that mowed down the noted historian in scene eight. And just when you think Arthur's great quest is nearing an end, a sudden plot twist sends the movie reeling into an unexpected conclusion as the murderers find their man and the quest closes, all in one sudden (if not sliiiightly anticlimactic) bang.

The joyride is not without its bumps, however. The movie borders on inappropriate several times. There are a few scattered profanities and misuses of God's name and some crude humor -- most of it hollered by a French guard with an almost unintelligible accent -- although most viewers can probably make out a few anatomical references. Sexual content is also fairly minimal, although there is one scene in which Galahad the Pure finds himself in the hands of the Ladies of the Castle Anthrax, who make an appearance to foible his chastity. Galahad does not break, but it's clear what the ladies want.

In one of the cartoon opening segments a tiny stained-glass-like figure of a sitting lady is knocked askew by a hurtling monk and does several spins before finally landing upside-down. Her dress goes over her head, revealing her backside, but it is poor cartoonery and also small and brief. Violence is a matter of taste -- there are multiple battle scenes in which extremely fake blood shoots out of the combatants, but it isn't meant to disturb audience members in any way and is mostly laughable. (Think of it as ketchup.) Most of the injured don't die, anyway, but seem to be just peachy. 

Of more concern to some Christians may be the fact that "nothing is sacred," as the Man From Scene Twenty-Four tells Arthur. A few of the script's dealings with God may seem irreverent to some viewers, although I was not offended. Most of the monks in the movie are slightly masochistic in a humorous (and historically accurate) sort of way, and the Holy Hand Grenade is used to dispatch a killer rabbit (with a bit of ceremony and readings from the Book of Armaments). God Himself is portrayed as a cardboard-cutout-type piece of overly done animation, mostly because the special effects of the movie are supposed to be crummy. He gives Arthur his quest and in the conversation tells the king how much he hates it when humans grovel. The attitudes of these portrayals, however, seem to be making light of medieval religion rather than mocking it, simply as the movie also makes light of Camelot and chivalry.

These bumps don't really mar the overall effect of the movie, which is highly entertaining in a mindless sort of way. The film has no bad message -- it appears to have almost no message at all -- and if you like British humor, you're sure to laugh at the Knights Who Say "Ni!", Sir Robin's minstrels, or the Trojan Bunny. Its few bad points are far more harmless than most PG movies of today, and it leaves no ugly residues or questions in the mind. (Expect to be quoting it for the rest of your life, however.) For anyone who loves the Arthurian legends and is up for a more masculine version of The Princess Bride, Monty Python is a must-see. (And it does leave the viewer with a deep thought to ponder: "Who the heck IS Monty Python, anyway?")