A self-involved introduction
A decade ago, this movie was on my long list for my top 100 favorite movies… and I’ll never understand how I was foolish enough not to include it.
Other than the fact I wanted to include some movies that left a strong first impression (after seeing them only once) and some movies (pulp fiction, Shawshank, goodfellas) others had put on theirs. Pulp Fiction is still an all time favorite I watch at least once a year.
Maybe one day I’ll go back and fix the list or at least write about some honorable mentions.
Since this beloved and, to the best of my knowledge, most well known of the Monty Python film series is turning 50 soon, what a better time to talk about it?
Introducing Monty Python
For me personally, it set the standard for all Monty Python related media. Unfortunately such a high standard that nothing comes close.
Although I vaguely remember liking The Meaning of Life until one particular sketch ruined the whole thing for me and I only saw The Life of Brian once… the latter I wouldn’t mind returning to a second time.
I’m sure I’d also seen some of the tv series (from VHS tapes we borrowed from the library- so yeah it’s been a long time) and the humor didn’t quite resonate the same way.
The Monty Python flying circus troupe (John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle among many others) is essentially a bunch of British guys doing sketches involving British humor. Which sometimes includes nudity or toilet humor. And the jokes, as good as they are in this movie, they might not be funny to everyone.
In terms of that oddball British humor with the nudity, it only appears in animated form and it involves a lot of butts. Like a dozen butts blowing trumpets right before the title of the film appears on screen.
Much Ado about dentists, moose and llamas
(Trust me, it might not make sense now but it’s relevant)
In terms of this movie being discussed as an actual movie, it’s very unconventional. And that’s part of its charm. Technically there is a plot or at least an objective the characters are pursuing. But maybe not a beginning or middle and DEFINITELY not an ending… which we’ll get to later.
What’s sorta bizarre is that the actual movie doesn’t start until 7 minutes in and we don’t see the title until 20 minutes in. And you thought it was weird how a lot of tv shows in the last decade will run for an average of 10 minutes before the title screen comes up and the cast credits roll after the first commercial break.
It might catch you off guard the first few times but the movie starts with opening credits with another movie and it’s not until the credits stop the projectionist realizes it’s the wrong movie and switches reels.
To this day I still don’t know if that was a real movie or these guys were so out there that they made up a fake movie just for a gag. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time a movie included a fake movie (looking at you, “angels with filthy souls”).
Then we have the opening credits… not gonna spoil the jokes but let’s just say there was a lot of goofing off and a lot of people being sacked because of it.
Britains making fun of Britains
This is maybe a small portion of the movie but still worth mentioning.
Some of the jokes are self-deprecating and as a result might be funnier to British audiences than American ones. But they make fun of the Plague (“bring out your dead”), politics (King Arthur being disrespectful to a peasant who says the way he inherited Excalibur isn’t the proper way to earn leadership over an entire country) and burning witches (“she turned me into a newt!… I got better”).
Swallows, Flesh Wounds and Ni!!!
Then there’s the better known jokes fans can quote verbatim or people on the fringe have heard but maybe don’t know the context.
The movie begins with King Arthur in pursuit of knights to join his Round Table at Camelot. But not having much luck.
We hear the clopping of horse hooves but he arrives on screen with just a squire banging coconuts together. The first castle he comes to starts up a whole dialogue about said coconuts and how he came across them.
One of these theories involves swallows transporting them and it goes on from there. And unlike most of the jokes, this one actually makes a comeback later on in the film.
It’s hard to say whether the Black Knight or the Knights who say Ni! is the best known of this movie’s sequences. But the Black Knight is probably the funniest.
He refuses to join King Arthur and he refuses to let him pass. So the only solution is a sword fight and despite losing his limbs one at a time, you gotta admire the knight’s perseverance. Or at least laugh at his lunacy.
When I first saw this scene, it was giving me flashbacks to an old computer game we had in the 90s called Battle Chess. So called because it shows 3D rendering of the pieces as people and they kill each other in funny and sometimes gruesome ways with fake blood. When the two knights face off, one loses his limbs one at a time until he’s left hopping on one leg before he’s finished. The only other deaths I remember from this game (I was in 1st grade so we’re talking 30+ years ago) involve the Queen. One where the rook (who transforms into a hulking rock monster when played) eats her. And when the king kills the queen, they hug and she tries to stab him in the back but he fends her off.
I’ll include a link so you can see for yourself. It was pretty cool at the time and still is, actually. I’m rubbish at chess but it was worth it just for the animations alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADcEI84wMX0
The knights who say Ni! appear later on in the movie but nonetheless provide a difficult roadblock for King Arthur to overcome.
They’re also one of those running gags not everyone might find funny although conventional wisdom suggests any word can be funny if you repeat it enough times.
They demand a shrubbery before letting anyone pass… we may not say Ni!! terribly often but this movie made shrubbery a funnier word than it had any right to be. If anything it’s just funny because us Americans just call them shrubs.
Meeting the knights of the round table
Confession- I know the cast members play multiple roles throughout the movie. But for the life of me, I cannot tell you which actor played who. And I honestly don’t care enough to know. What shines through in this movie is just the characters and it’s a very colorful cast of them.
The only knight who gets a notable introduction is Sir Bedivere, where he teaches the townsfolk that witches are made of wood and that’s why they burn. Based on this series of conversations, he may not be the brightest knight but he carries enough authority that people heed his advice.
There’s this running gag where he constantly has to lift the grid part of his helmet to see and it has a distinct “creak” when he does. :sigh: It’s not nails on a chalkboard but it annoys me just enough I just wish someone made a judgement call and had it removed. It’s so pointless. None of the other knights have face shields.
The rest are introduced in a storybook montage but get their individual storylines later on. Sirs Lancelot, Galahad and Robin.
There’s also a random musical number that comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again… until they decided to turn this movie into the Broadway musical, Spamalot. I never saw it cuz it was Hamilton before Hamilton. Tickets were impossible to get but not to the point you had to give up your firstborn just to get into the nosebleeds.
Finally we have our quest. God appears and gives King Arthur and his knights the quest to find the holy grail.
The first place they look winds up being a complete disaster.
They come across a French castle full of obnoxious French men who mock them with the most outlandish insults using outrageous accents.
The most famous being “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
There’s also a question as to why the French guys are in England… probably something to do with the long complicated history between the two countries.
The knights are barred from the castle so Bedivere concocts a brilliant plan B. A nod to the Trojan Horse- except he forgets one crucial detail so it fails spectacularly.
The unique shape of it and the brutal murder of the movie’s narrator in the subsequent scene foreshadow what awaits the knights going forward.
After suffering through humiliation at the hands of the French, the knights separate and go their separate ways for a short time.
Sir Robin has the shortest interlude, most notable for the complete 180 of his minstrels. Which go from his hype men to his greatest critics cuz he backed away from one challenge.
Sir Galahad gets the scene with the most female characters of the entire movie. Castle Anthrax which is full of women between ages of 16 and 19 1/2. He stumbles across it in the middle of a storm and sees a vision of the holy grail floating overhead. He’s so feverish about his quest he almost doesn’t notice what’s going on around him. But once he realizes he’s surrounded by willing and able young women, he’s involuntarily rescued by Lancelot. His best quote is him begging Lancelot “let me go back and face the peril.”
Lancelot’s part of the story is the longest, almost to the point it overstays its welcome.
It begins with a prince who’s being forced by his father to marry a woman he doesn’t love. She’s more homely than beautiful but the main attraction is her huge “tracks of land.” So a marriage of convenience.
The king does a “who’s on first” routine with the guards to make sure they don’t leave the prince alone until he comes back. The king also breaks the 4th wall every time music starts playing and it immediately cuts off. Apparently he’s not a fan of musical numbers.
The prince launches an arrow with a note attached begging for its finder to rescue him. Naturally Lancelot finds it and thinks it’s from a damsel in distress. And a flurry of chaos lies in his wake in his pursuit of his would-be conquest. And much to the king’s chagrin, the prince does get his musical number… although it really doesn’t go anywhere and Lancelot is left swinging haplessly on a rope waiting for a push that’ll launch him out of the castle.
The knights reunite after the knights of Ni! sequence in a animated sketch.
It might just be my family but we love those moments of rejoicing where flags are waved with a subtly enthusiastic “yeah…”
There’s also changing of seasons, during which they resort to cannibalism to make it through winter. Eating Sir Robin’s minstrels… with more rejoicing (“yeah…”)
An uneven 3rd act
The final chapter of the film is arguably the most bizarre. The knights have to get through a cave, guarded by the single most terrifying creature imaginable… and later chased by a two legged monster with a thousand eyes. One bested by the holy hand grenade and the other… they escape because the monster’s animator had a heart attack.
Not sure if that’s genius or something that reeks of desperation because they literally drew themselves into a corner.
The final test is the bridge of death, where you must answer 3 questions correctly to pass. We learn many things here but probably the most important is to not second guess yourself. And also to brush up on your geography and your swallows.
The end result is three hilarious casualties and a small hint of what’s left to come.
So we’re left with King Arthur and Bedivere who find the location of the grail and summon reinforcements to take the castle where it’s presumed to be held. Reinforcements that come out of nowhere by the way… but then again, so do the police.
Apparently a knight is the lead suspect of the narrator’s murder from earlier in the movie. So all the knights get taken in for questioning and that’s literally the end of the movie.
I cannot overstate how much I hate this STUPID ending. If you can even call it that. They never find the grail. We never find out who the actual murder is. And what’s with these modern day cops in medieval times? Or was this whole movie an over the top Renaissance fair?
According to a final Jeopardy clue, an alternate ending involved the knights running through the Harrods shopping center in modern day London but they ran out of time or money to shoot it. (Now that I think about it, didn’t Blazing Saddles have a similar ending where the old west folks crashed a modern day movie set?)
I would’ve taken that in a heartbeat. Anything’s better than the police taking out all the cameras and the movie just stopping altogether.
I’d consider this one of the worst movie endings of all time alongside Gone with the Wind. But at least I didn’t feel as if I wasted hours of my life on a disappointing conclusion.
Other than the fact I wanted to include some movies that left a strong first impression (after seeing them only once) and some movies (pulp fiction, Shawshank, goodfellas) others had put on theirs. Pulp Fiction is still an all time favorite I watch at least once a year.
Maybe one day I’ll go back and fix the list or at least write about some honorable mentions.
Since this beloved and, to the best of my knowledge, most well known of the Monty Python film series is turning 50 soon, what a better time to talk about it?
Introducing Monty Python
For me personally, it set the standard for all Monty Python related media. Unfortunately such a high standard that nothing comes close.
Although I vaguely remember liking The Meaning of Life until one particular sketch ruined the whole thing for me and I only saw The Life of Brian once… the latter I wouldn’t mind returning to a second time.
I’m sure I’d also seen some of the tv series (from VHS tapes we borrowed from the library- so yeah it’s been a long time) and the humor didn’t quite resonate the same way.
The Monty Python flying circus troupe (John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle among many others) is essentially a bunch of British guys doing sketches involving British humor. Which sometimes includes nudity or toilet humor. And the jokes, as good as they are in this movie, they might not be funny to everyone.
In terms of that oddball British humor with the nudity, it only appears in animated form and it involves a lot of butts. Like a dozen butts blowing trumpets right before the title of the film appears on screen.
Much Ado about dentists, moose and llamas
(Trust me, it might not make sense now but it’s relevant)
In terms of this movie being discussed as an actual movie, it’s very unconventional. And that’s part of its charm. Technically there is a plot or at least an objective the characters are pursuing. But maybe not a beginning or middle and DEFINITELY not an ending… which we’ll get to later.
What’s sorta bizarre is that the actual movie doesn’t start until 7 minutes in and we don’t see the title until 20 minutes in. And you thought it was weird how a lot of tv shows in the last decade will run for an average of 10 minutes before the title screen comes up and the cast credits roll after the first commercial break.
It might catch you off guard the first few times but the movie starts with opening credits with another movie and it’s not until the credits stop the projectionist realizes it’s the wrong movie and switches reels.
To this day I still don’t know if that was a real movie or these guys were so out there that they made up a fake movie just for a gag. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time a movie included a fake movie (looking at you, “angels with filthy souls”).
Then we have the opening credits… not gonna spoil the jokes but let’s just say there was a lot of goofing off and a lot of people being sacked because of it.
Britains making fun of Britains
This is maybe a small portion of the movie but still worth mentioning.
Some of the jokes are self-deprecating and as a result might be funnier to British audiences than American ones. But they make fun of the Plague (“bring out your dead”), politics (King Arthur being disrespectful to a peasant who says the way he inherited Excalibur isn’t the proper way to earn leadership over an entire country) and burning witches (“she turned me into a newt!… I got better”).
Swallows, Flesh Wounds and Ni!!!
Then there’s the better known jokes fans can quote verbatim or people on the fringe have heard but maybe don’t know the context.
The movie begins with King Arthur in pursuit of knights to join his Round Table at Camelot. But not having much luck.
We hear the clopping of horse hooves but he arrives on screen with just a squire banging coconuts together. The first castle he comes to starts up a whole dialogue about said coconuts and how he came across them.
One of these theories involves swallows transporting them and it goes on from there. And unlike most of the jokes, this one actually makes a comeback later on in the film.
It’s hard to say whether the Black Knight or the Knights who say Ni! is the best known of this movie’s sequences. But the Black Knight is probably the funniest.
He refuses to join King Arthur and he refuses to let him pass. So the only solution is a sword fight and despite losing his limbs one at a time, you gotta admire the knight’s perseverance. Or at least laugh at his lunacy.
"You've got no arms!"
"Yes, I have!"
"Look!"
"It's just a flesh wound..."
When I first saw this scene, it was giving me flashbacks to an old computer game we had in the 90s called Battle Chess. So called because it shows 3D rendering of the pieces as people and they kill each other in funny and sometimes gruesome ways with fake blood. When the two knights face off, one loses his limbs one at a time until he’s left hopping on one leg before he’s finished. The only other deaths I remember from this game (I was in 1st grade so we’re talking 30+ years ago) involve the Queen. One where the rook (who transforms into a hulking rock monster when played) eats her. And when the king kills the queen, they hug and she tries to stab him in the back but he fends her off.
I’ll include a link so you can see for yourself. It was pretty cool at the time and still is, actually. I’m rubbish at chess but it was worth it just for the animations alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADcEI84wMX0
The knights who say Ni! appear later on in the movie but nonetheless provide a difficult roadblock for King Arthur to overcome.
They’re also one of those running gags not everyone might find funny although conventional wisdom suggests any word can be funny if you repeat it enough times.
They demand a shrubbery before letting anyone pass… we may not say Ni!! terribly often but this movie made shrubbery a funnier word than it had any right to be. If anything it’s just funny because us Americans just call them shrubs.
Meeting the knights of the round table
Confession- I know the cast members play multiple roles throughout the movie. But for the life of me, I cannot tell you which actor played who. And I honestly don’t care enough to know. What shines through in this movie is just the characters and it’s a very colorful cast of them.
The only knight who gets a notable introduction is Sir Bedivere, where he teaches the townsfolk that witches are made of wood and that’s why they burn. Based on this series of conversations, he may not be the brightest knight but he carries enough authority that people heed his advice.
There’s this running gag where he constantly has to lift the grid part of his helmet to see and it has a distinct “creak” when he does. :sigh: It’s not nails on a chalkboard but it annoys me just enough I just wish someone made a judgement call and had it removed. It’s so pointless. None of the other knights have face shields.
The rest are introduced in a storybook montage but get their individual storylines later on. Sirs Lancelot, Galahad and Robin.
There’s also a random musical number that comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again… until they decided to turn this movie into the Broadway musical, Spamalot. I never saw it cuz it was Hamilton before Hamilton. Tickets were impossible to get but not to the point you had to give up your firstborn just to get into the nosebleeds.
Finally we have our quest. God appears and gives King Arthur and his knights the quest to find the holy grail.
The first place they look winds up being a complete disaster.
They come across a French castle full of obnoxious French men who mock them with the most outlandish insults using outrageous accents.
The most famous being “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
There’s also a question as to why the French guys are in England… probably something to do with the long complicated history between the two countries.
The knights are barred from the castle so Bedivere concocts a brilliant plan B. A nod to the Trojan Horse- except he forgets one crucial detail so it fails spectacularly.
The unique shape of it and the brutal murder of the movie’s narrator in the subsequent scene foreshadow what awaits the knights going forward.
After suffering through humiliation at the hands of the French, the knights separate and go their separate ways for a short time.
Sir Robin has the shortest interlude, most notable for the complete 180 of his minstrels. Which go from his hype men to his greatest critics cuz he backed away from one challenge.
Sir Galahad gets the scene with the most female characters of the entire movie. Castle Anthrax which is full of women between ages of 16 and 19 1/2. He stumbles across it in the middle of a storm and sees a vision of the holy grail floating overhead. He’s so feverish about his quest he almost doesn’t notice what’s going on around him. But once he realizes he’s surrounded by willing and able young women, he’s involuntarily rescued by Lancelot. His best quote is him begging Lancelot “let me go back and face the peril.”
Lancelot’s part of the story is the longest, almost to the point it overstays its welcome.
It begins with a prince who’s being forced by his father to marry a woman he doesn’t love. She’s more homely than beautiful but the main attraction is her huge “tracks of land.” So a marriage of convenience.
The king does a “who’s on first” routine with the guards to make sure they don’t leave the prince alone until he comes back. The king also breaks the 4th wall every time music starts playing and it immediately cuts off. Apparently he’s not a fan of musical numbers.
The prince launches an arrow with a note attached begging for its finder to rescue him. Naturally Lancelot finds it and thinks it’s from a damsel in distress. And a flurry of chaos lies in his wake in his pursuit of his would-be conquest. And much to the king’s chagrin, the prince does get his musical number… although it really doesn’t go anywhere and Lancelot is left swinging haplessly on a rope waiting for a push that’ll launch him out of the castle.
The knights reunite after the knights of Ni! sequence in a animated sketch.
It might just be my family but we love those moments of rejoicing where flags are waved with a subtly enthusiastic “yeah…”
There’s also changing of seasons, during which they resort to cannibalism to make it through winter. Eating Sir Robin’s minstrels… with more rejoicing (“yeah…”)
An uneven 3rd act
The final chapter of the film is arguably the most bizarre. The knights have to get through a cave, guarded by the single most terrifying creature imaginable… and later chased by a two legged monster with a thousand eyes. One bested by the holy hand grenade and the other… they escape because the monster’s animator had a heart attack.
Not sure if that’s genius or something that reeks of desperation because they literally drew themselves into a corner.
The final test is the bridge of death, where you must answer 3 questions correctly to pass. We learn many things here but probably the most important is to not second guess yourself. And also to brush up on your geography and your swallows.
The end result is three hilarious casualties and a small hint of what’s left to come.
So we’re left with King Arthur and Bedivere who find the location of the grail and summon reinforcements to take the castle where it’s presumed to be held. Reinforcements that come out of nowhere by the way… but then again, so do the police.
Apparently a knight is the lead suspect of the narrator’s murder from earlier in the movie. So all the knights get taken in for questioning and that’s literally the end of the movie.
I cannot overstate how much I hate this STUPID ending. If you can even call it that. They never find the grail. We never find out who the actual murder is. And what’s with these modern day cops in medieval times? Or was this whole movie an over the top Renaissance fair?
According to a final Jeopardy clue, an alternate ending involved the knights running through the Harrods shopping center in modern day London but they ran out of time or money to shoot it. (Now that I think about it, didn’t Blazing Saddles have a similar ending where the old west folks crashed a modern day movie set?)
I would’ve taken that in a heartbeat. Anything’s better than the police taking out all the cameras and the movie just stopping altogether.
I’d consider this one of the worst movie endings of all time alongside Gone with the Wind. But at least I didn’t feel as if I wasted hours of my life on a disappointing conclusion.
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