Movie Confusion Part I: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Once I watch a movie, I can't forget it. It stays there in my head: the actors, their roles, the plot, the minutest of details in the movie because surely one day I'll be on a game show and win a million dollars for knowing that the Starbucks worker in The Devil Wears Prada is the actress who plays the antagonist's (Meryl Streep) daughter. This is bound to happen.

Unfortunately, though, before I see and research a movie and all I know is the title, I'm pretty clueless. I'll make weird assumptions based on its name that sometimes includes what the plot is. Or I'll get it mixed up with another movie. A great (and at the same time horrible, on my part) example of both of these is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Up until a few years ago, I thought that MPatHG was an Indiana Jones movie. I know, I know. It doesn't even have Indiana's name in the title (to be fair, the trilogy did have a movie that included a search for the Holy Grail), but that didn't stop younger, stupider me from assuming that it was.

Even when I found out that this movie was in it's own denomination, I still imagined the opening scene to include a sexy man running out of a temple so as to not get run over by a giant boulder. It included some sort of snake sidekick that would spout out words of wisdom like, “Life will never turn out as you thought it would.” as he swallowed someone whole. He would be voiced by Idris Elba. The treasure-seeking hunk would be played by some sort of lesser Harrison Ford (obviously this version would be a lower budget version of Indiana Jones), so maybe Daniel Craig.

I just didn't get it. (But frankly, my version seems much better. I'll look into it.)

But that's okay, because I finally watched the movie, and, to my surprise, found out that it's a comedy. A quite old one, at that.

From the minds of the British comedy group, Monty Python (hence the title; not referring to a snake as I had thought), this 1975 film is pretty awesome. It seems almost ahead of its time; I haven't seen anything like it and that's probably the only reason I could get through it. The jokes are simple, but enjoyable. It has an almost Saturday Night Live-esque nature (I guess the fact that SNL premiered later the same year the movie came out was just a coincidence, right?).

And although I would've enjoyed Daniel Craig and Monty the Python fighting Nazis and finding treasure of all sorts, this was pretty great too. And now I'm a little less confused.