The Art of Nonsense

Review: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

By Meg Davy

This week for Reel Dialogue, for our fantasy genre, we watched the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Personally, I’ve loved this movie since the first time I watched it with my dad. I remember him cracking up at the French guy and all of his jokes and insults. What’s unique about this movie’s humor is how much of it is just complete nonsense. One scene that always comes to mind when I think of Monty Python is the killer rabbit just flying around and biting everyone and they’re all freaking out and trying to kill it. It’s completely ridiculous! But that’s the point! I love how self aware this movie is. The description of the movie on letterboxd even says “And now! At last! Another film completely different from some of the other films which aren’t quite the same as this one is.”

My review for this movie was something along the lines of how it seems like every scene was written individually by different people and then strung together to result in a silly movie. The movie is just as creative as it is silly because I think it’s hard to use this kind of ridiculous, slapstick humor in movies and actually pull it off well which I believe Monty Python does. I really like a lot of the jokes throughout the movie but I think, if I had to choose, one of my favorite long running jokes is them galloping with their servants using coconuts to mimic horse hooves. I mean, come on, that’s just too good not to like and the actors had to be committed as well because I’d probably be laughing the whole time if I had to do that.

Overall, there were a good few laughs during this viewing and maybe a bit of confusion thrown in there, but when is it not confusing when watching any of the Monty Python movies?