Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A wonderful charm filters through these almost collegiate efforts, as if these underfunded Brits, in doing their best, did it better. The result is a singular work, accessible and inviting on a level their later films did not achieve and colored with their youth, energy, determination, fearlessness, and—with no studio or censor board constantly peering over their shoulders—freedom, of the kind that makes nerdy, glasses-wearing schoolboys (and some others) wish to remember. Take any one of those elements out of the Python formula and Holy Grail would have suffered. I—and thousands like me—would never have been introduced to them, high school or no