September 20–27, 2001

movie shorts

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

recommended

It’s difficult to be objective about this re-release of the 1975 comedy classic when I spent hours in high school rewinding my tape of the soundtrack so I could memorize the "Constitutional Peasant" routine. The facts are as follows: the re-release (preamble, of course, to an upcoming DVD) includes cleaned-up audio and video (though the image still looks grotty, and there are least three distracting skips I don’t recall from multiple viewings of the old video) and "24 seconds of new footage!" — an extraneous episode of fourth-wall breaking that was rightly left out in the first place. On the plus side, the big-screen experience allows you to catch subtle jokes your television obscures, from the absurd moustache painted on John Cleese’s obstreperous French kuh-nigget-hater to the manic detail of Terry Gilliam’s fever-dream animations. Just don’t sit next to anyone dressed in medieval costume, or you may never hear the movie above the inevitable sing-alongs.

—Sam Adams