Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a comedy that treats the Arthurian legend as raw material for a joke and never apologizes for it. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones directed the 1975 film in their feature debuts, and the six Pythons wrote and performed it. The plot: King Arthur, squire Patsy banging coconut shells beside him, gathers knights and goes looking for the Holy Grail.
Trailer, via Monty Python.
King Arthur and the Coconut Shells
Arthur mimes riding a horse while Patsy clicks two coconuts together. That single bit of stagecraft carries the whole movie’s logic. The film is cheap on purpose, and the cheapness is the point.
The Pythons built Holy Grail during a break between the third and fourth series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Their first film, And Now for Something Completely Different, had been a pile of old sketches. This one is an original story, and it parodies Arthur’s quest rather than recycling television material.
The Black Knight and Sir Robin
Arthur defeats the Black Knight, who keeps insisting he can still fight after his limbs are gone. He recruits Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Galahad the Pure, and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot.
Some of the best jokes are the quiet ones. Sir Robin avoids a fight with a Three-Headed Knight by running while the heads argue with each other. Galahad gets led astray by a grail-shaped beacon. The knights reach Camelot and Arthur refuses to go in, calling it “a silly place.”
The French Soldier and the Trojan Rabbit
God appears and orders Arthur to find the Grail. The knights reach a castle held by French soldiers who claim to have it and drive them off with a barrage of barnyard animals. Bedevere’s plan to sneak in with a Trojan Rabbit fails because he forgets to tell anyone to hide inside it.
Then a modern-day historian filming a documentary gets killed by a knight on horseback, and a police investigation starts. It is the strangest swerve in the film, and it works.
Graham Chapman and the Rest of the Cast
The cast list is a reminder of how much work six people did. Graham Chapman plays Arthur, the Voice of God, and the Hiccoughing Guard. John Cleese is the Black Knight, Sir Launcelot, the Taunting French Guard, and Tim the Enchanter. Eric Idle is Sir Robin, Roger the Shrubber, and Concorde.
Michael Palin takes Dennis, Sir Galahad, the Narrator, and the Leader of the Knights Who Say “Ni!” Terry Jones is Sir Bedevere and Prince Herbert. Terry Gilliam is Patsy and the Bridgekeeper. Connie Booth plays the Witch; Carol Cleveland plays Zoot.
What Holy Grail Got Right
Ranked against the other great comedies, Holy Grail holds up because its jokes are structural, not decorative:
- The coconut shells make the fake horse a running gag about budget.
- The Black Knight turns a fight scene into an argument about denial.
- The Trojan Rabbit is a plan that fails on one forgotten instruction.
- The historian’s death drags a medieval quest into a police procedural.
The film grossed more than any other British film screened in the US in 1975. In 2011, ABC’s Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time named it the second-best comedy ever, behind Airplane!. Total Film readers ranked it fifth in 2000; Channel 4 viewers put it sixth in 2006. Eric Idle later turned it into Spamalot, which won a Tony in 2005.
The Ending and the Score
The movie’s weakest habit is its willingness to let a sketch run past its punchline. A few bits coast. That is a small complaint against a film whose best scenes are quoted decades later by people who cannot remember where the lines came from.
Holy Grail is not a parody that needs the legend to work. It needs six funny people, some coconuts, and the nerve to end on a police van. 9.1 of 10.
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