Mostly Pointless. Sorry.

Rating: 3/10 (1 July 2012)

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with my neurology, some recently formed gnarled tangle of cells, some neuronal accident, some collapse of axonal hillocks or something. I caught snatches of this film years ago and wasn't too amused. Now I've just watched it as part of the boxed set and it's still not very funny.
I guess I get the general thrust, which is a comic undermining of Arthurian legends -- the holy grail, the monsters, the valorous knights in battle, the journeys, and so forth. I'm for the goal but the episodes that illustrate this fictional legend are more silly than witty, like Mel Brooks at his worst.
Take one of the first scenes. Arthur and his knights face a French castle and demand entrance. The guard at the battlements points out that they aren't riding horses. There's just some guy clapping two coconut halves together. Everybody knows there are no coconuts in England. The knights are indignant. They point out that the coconut could have been carried from the south by air, perhaps by a bird, maybe a swallow. And there follows an argument with the French guard over whether either of two types of swallow could build up flight speed while carrying a coconut. The dispute goes on for several minutes. It's obviously designed to be funny but it only struck me as silly -- as did the notion that coconut halves could be substituted for horses in the first place.
It seemed as pointless as the confusion of the two guards when they received the order to keep the nobleman in his room in the tower, not to let him out until they received permission. It simply goes on too long. Abbot and Costello could have done it.
The killer rabbit, ditto. The joke reached its punch line the moment the rabbit appeared.
I remember hearing laughter at the back of the theater. Someone must have been telling jokes back there.
"The Life of Brian" is far funnier, perhaps because the farce has a target that is still alive and spastically kicking. And "The Meaning of Life" was better yet because of its underlying edginess and dying fall.