Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The British comedy team’s first real film (And Now for Something Completely Different was a compilation of their TV skits) is back. The movie has purportedly been reprinted on better film stock with an up-to-date, re-mastered soundtrack. It does look better than it did in 1975 (it always looked pretty cheap), and the sound is stereo now where it was monaural before. There are some claims that “missing footage” has been added, but it’ll take someone who knows the movie a lot better than I do to identify it (the running time was, and remains, 90 minutes). With all that, the film is the same as it’s always been: funnier the first time you see it than it will ever be again, with some inspired gags and a lot of dry stretches. In retrospect, it’s a dry run for their masterpiece, Life of Brian.