Obviously everyone knows Monty Python and the Holy Grail and I’ve watched plenty of clips from it here and there, but I’ve never seen the full thing. So when I realized that it’s on Netflix, I thought that it was time to fix that. It’s every bit as zany and outrageous as its reputation, yet unfortunately it does seem that it’s best appreciated as a series of skits. Some of the sequences take too long to get into and don’t land very well. The whole thing is just a bit too much. I’m amazed by the irreverence on display though and impressed that Terry Gilliam and his team basically learned how to direct in the process of making it.

King Arthur and his squire Patsy travel across Britain in search of knights to join his Round Table. Instead of riding horses, he pretends to ride one while Patsy drums two coconuts together to mimic the clopping of hooves. Arriving at a castle, he is challenged on this but simply slinks away. Eventually he does manage to gather a band of knights after passing through a town infected with plague, explaining to peasants that he is king because the Lady of the Lake gave him the sword Excalibur and witnesses the trial of a witch. Soon afterwards, God appears in the sky and gives him the quest to seek the Holy Grail. At first, Arthur attempts the quest as a group and approaches a castle manned by French soldiers. When they fail to take the castle and are ridiculed, he instead orders them to split up. So each of the knights go their separate way and experience all kinds of adventures.

I’d had no exposure to any of the work of the Monty Python comedy troupe but I do know that before this film, they made comedy sketches for television. Perhaps that’s why this feels very episodic, with each individual gag standing or failing on its own. My wife found the fake Swedish subtitles in the opening crawl hilarious but then was bored by pretty much everything else. For my part, I found most of the fourth wall breaking stuff to be uninteresting. I enjoyed it most when the characters stay in character and make fun of the genre itself. A great example is when Sir Lancelot happily massacres his way through a wedding party, which presages the modern interpretation of adventurers as murder hobos. The jokes about random peasants and guards being incongruously knowledgeable and literate are fun too, though I feel that the skits usually let them go on for too long, diminishing the effect. I also liked the singing parts and wished there were more of them.

Some of the gags I know about in passing seem underwhelming now that I’ve watched it. The Knights of Ni gag is one such example for me. I think the cultural gulf matters here. The irreverence and even the willingness to profane religious sensibilities are kind of jaw-dropping to me but it’s not like I have any personal stake in it. Similarly I’m as familiar with the Arthurian legend as any fantasy fan, but perhaps this comedic interpretation might be extra piquant for Britons? Anyway for me this has its moments, but it is definitely not one of my favorite comedies of all time.