Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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DVD Review
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Review
Plot
I am sat here thinking, “How can I possibly do a review of a Monty Python film and do it justice”. The answer is probably that I can’t but I’m going to give it my best shot, and so to quote the great film itself I shall “GET ON WITH IT!”.
King Arthur of the Britons searches the length and breadth of England to find brave and wise Knights to join him at Camelot. Eventually Arthur bands together a group of Knights including “Sir Lancelot The Brave”, “Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Lancelot “,”Sir Bedevere”, “Sir Galahad the Pure” and “Sir Gawain”.
Just as the brave bands of knights decide not to go to Camelot (It is a silly place), they are given a holy quest from God himself. Their quest is to seek the Holy Grail. Along the way they will face many dangers and strange locations including “The Knights of who say NI”, some very rude Frenchmen and a particularly nasty fluffy white rabbit at the cave of Caerbannog.
Video / Audio
It would be very easy for me to say that the video quality on this disk is not reference material. Sometimes the picture can be very soft and other times a little grainy. I think you have to take some factors into account when discussing the picture quality of this disk.
The film is now over twenty years old
The whole film costs just over 200,000 pounds to make.
I had the original letterboxed region 1 version of this film and there is no comparison between the two versions. Compared to the old version this new print is nothing short of superb.
The audio track has been remixed to make a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. As you might expect the surround channels don’t get too much of a workout. It’s still an excellent track though; dialogue is center driven and is crisp and clear. The surround channels provide occasional effects such as wind blowing during forest scenes etc. The original mono soundtrack and a French soundtrack are also included.
Extras
Disk 1
The first commentary is with Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. This is a very interesting commentary with plenty of background info about the film. At one point they discuss how the Python team got together and where the name Monty Python came from. They imply at the start of the commentary that they are together watching the film. It seemed to me that they were recorded separately though as they never actually talk directly to each other and they often refer to each other as if they weren’t there. I could be wrong of course but the conversation just doesn’t flow as if two people are talking together.
The second commentary features Michael Palin, Eric Idle and John Cleese. As you can probably imagine this is a much more light-hearted commentary than the first one. They do spend quite a lot of time talking about the poor conditions they had to work in and how cheaply the whole film was made. Although I enjoyed the commentary it suffers from the same problem as the first one. Even though it’s spliced together very cleverly you can still tell that the three of them are not actually together. I’m sure the commentary would have been much funnier if they were in the same room.
The Killer Rabbit is a Matrix style in film feature. At certain points in the film a rabbit appears on screen. If you select the rabbit you get some still screens that either show receipts for how cheap things were, or original scene sketches from Terry Gilliam. The other amusing extra on the first disk is the Hard of Hearing feature, when you select this feature Terry Jones reads out the menu options in a loud and silly voice.
Subtitles on the first disk include English, French and Spanish and two rather different subtitle tracks. The first of these is the original screenplay, as the film progresses the screenplay is displayed over the top, the full screen height is used as opposed to the usual bottom section of the screen. The second of these is called “Subtitles for people who don’t like the film (Taken from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II)”. What’s really surprising is how well these subtitles tie in with the on screen action.
The film is broken into 28 Chapters and the chapter’s menu is fully animated with a short clip taken from each individual chapter.
Disk 2
Singalong is a collection of three songs from the film with the lyrics on screen for you to sing along to. The songs are “Knights of the Round Table”, “Brave Sire Robin” and the “Monks Chant”. The latter song contains an amusing introduction from Terry Jones on how to bang your head with the DVD case while singing along with the monks.
Quest For The Holy Grail Locations is one of my favourite extra on disk 2. It’s an hour-long documentary featuring Terry Jones and Michael Palin. They tour some of the locations in Scotland that were used for the film. Locations include Doune Castle, where just about all the castle scenes were filmed, the cave of Caerbannog location of the killer rabbit scenes and the location of castle Aaarrghh, which surprisingly is actually someones real home.
Under the Sacred Relics menu there’s a list of extras including:
How To Use Your Coconuts, an educational film from the ministry of foods is a short film starring Michael Palin that demonstrates using coconuts to mimic a horse. Japanese Version is a collection of two scenes from the Japanese version of the film with subtitles directly translated back into English. It’s amusing to see how much of the dialogue gets altered in the translation. BBC Film Night is a 17-minute on location feature that originally aired in 1974. It’s entirely set around the Doune Castle and includes interviews with all the cast. The interviews are conducted with the usual Python sense of humour. Old Rubbish and Artefacts are collections of posters, press releases and publicity materials (skip through to the last page of Old Rubbish to hear Terry Jones read out a negative review of the film). Photos is unsurprisingly a fairly extensive collection of behind the scenes photographs taken during the filming. There are two Trailers although they are basically the same thing and a set of Cast Bios, rather than show the usual film history the bios list all the characters they played in this film. There is also a hidden extra available in this menu.
Under the Unshot Footage menu there’s a list of extras including:
Lego Knights. This is the infamous Lego knight animation, if you’ve never seen it before it’s basically the “Knights Of The Round Table” scene animated using Lego characters. Everything is Lego, the knights, the castle and even the skeleton hanging up in the dungeon, very funny indeed. Location Recce is a typically python feature, it contains a sequence of completely unrelated old footage of locations such as the Grand Canyon, Australia and Hawaii. Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam talk over the footage and discuss how the checked out these locations for use in the film. Unused Ideas is a collection of sketches drawn by Terry Gilliam that never made it into the final film.
Finally there is a selection of web links available for those that have a DVD-ROM drive on their PC.
Overall
I have to say that I’ve been pretty blown away by this disk. Everything about it is top quality. There’s the new [hl=../article_content.php?id=3]Anamorphic[/hl] print, the DD5.1 soundtrack, the huge amount of hilarious extras, the Gilliam-esque animated menus and more. The disk even comes with a nice plastic outer sleeve to go over the double amaray case.
Whether or not you should get the disk depends of course on whether you are a Python fan or not. If you don’t like they’re particular brand of humour then no form of special edition is going to interest you. Then again if that is the case, why are you reading this review, eh?
If you are a fan though, then there’s no question that you simply must have this disk. Compared to the previous non-anamorphic featureless edition that was available this disk shines like the grail itself (Terrible pun, I know). Thinking about the disks I’ve bought over the last twelve months, I think it is safe to say that for me personally this is the release of 2001. Now that this film and “Life of Brian” have had the treatment they deserve I hope someone is thinking of honouring “The Meaning Of Life” in the same way.
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