If you haven't seen this movie ... well, what more can I say

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2013)

The one thing that I love about these Monty Python movies is not only how the humor can be quite farcical and outrageous, but that they are also quite realistic in it at times as well. One one hand you will have somebody blabbering on about nothing in particular and the film then cuts to shots of people crying out 'get on with it!'. Then there is the ongoing joke of the sparrow carrying a coconut which, when I first watched it, thought that it was some off handed remark made during the scene with the keeper of the bridge, until I realised that right at the beginning, when King Arthur first appears with his peasant banging two coconuts together, there is a discussion as to whether it is possible for a sparrow to carry a coconut to England (and there is another scene where a knight is attempting to tie a coconut to a sparrow to see if one can actually carry it).
As for the realistic parts of it, they do a fantastic job with it as well. For instance when Arthur 'rides' through a town one of the peasants asks who he is and another says that he is the king, and the only reason that they think he is a king is because he is clean (I won't repeat what they actually said in the movie because IMDb will then not allow me to post this commentary). It is also interesting how a group of peasants don't even know the king when he rides up to them (and they starts sprouting out Marxist doctrine – Python loves to use anachronisms in the movie, and for some reason, actually get away with it). While it is humorous, it is also true because it is highly unlikely that in those days the peasants would actually know what the king looked like.
As for the ending, well, that probably will go down in history as pretty much the most unexpected ending for a film to take. It simply comes completely out of left field, though it is not actually out of the blue because there are hints that it will be heading in that direction, but you still don't expect the police to rock up and proceed to arrest King Arthur and his Knights. Mind you when I saw Spamalot when I was in London I was actually very disappointed at the ending because, well, they actually found the Holy Grail. Okay, it was only 'based' on this film, but to be honest with you, I so prefer this movie than I did not musical (and am kicking myself that I did not go and see Rowan Atkinson). Oh, yeah, and I suspect that Tarantino may have picked up a thing or two with regards to the use of violence because some of the scenes in this movie are so Tarantino.