
Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Blu-ray
Your father smelt of elderberries
Review Round and round we go the video format bush. First you recorded it off the telly. Then you bought it on VHS. Finally, you acquired a perfectly brilliant version on DVD. And now, finally again, Sony Pictures has found yet another way for you to part with your money for the love of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Repeat performance: Monty Python and the Holy Grail gets the Blu-ray treatment
Depending upon your age, you may not have spent your way through all the formats, but that excellent two-disc DVD release from 2002 was bought by many. So let's see what you get on Blu-ray that you don't already have in your video library.
First, don't expect marvels from the additional resolution that Blu-ray affords. I saw the film in a cinema in the mid-1970s and I remember being disappointed even then at the poor visual quality. The cash-strapped Pythons must have chosen the cheapest film stock in the shop.

You've got mail
Sure enough, Blu-ray reveals occasional glints on polished metal and I think I noticed some colours that weren't green and brown like the rest of the film. However, a hasty shoot using cheap stock during a period of relentless overcast days is never going to make for a dazzling visual result. In fact, even the rostrum animations look grainy.
If the film quality wasn't bad enough, the sound is dreadful. Appalling on-location audio is something that afflicted Holy Grail and Life of Brian alike, so it's no surprise that there's little that could be done to fix it 37 years later. To give Sony Pictures some credit, the faked-up stereo is passable, although you can choose to listen to the soundtrack in its original glorious mono.

I have to push the pram a lot
In all honesty, I can't say the Blu-ray offers an audio-visual experience any better than the 10-year old DVD release. So the only differentiating factor has to be the Blu-ray extras. I advise caution here because the extras on the disc do not tally with those listed by Sony Pictures in its press releases.
Naturally, this Blu-ray version inherits several of the better extras from the DVD. These include two separate commentaries – one by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, the other by John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin – plus a mini documentary in which Michael Palin and Terry Jones revisit the film locations, shot in 2000.

I told them we've already got one
Also included are the famous Lego Knights dancing the Camelot song, two Japanese-dubbed scenes (the first castle taunting and the knights who say 'Ni!'), a BBC Film Night on-location report from 1974, subtitled singalong versions of the three main songs, the US cinema trailer and the unfunny mockumentary How to use your coconuts.
Next page: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
COMMENTS
Tell me...
Did you used to work for a video games magazine?
80% for a grainy film, with pointless and bad extras, that you admit has awful sound, just because it ties-in with a pay-for app? And they can't even link the online content correctly?
Isn't this back in the realm of "pay me money, I'll give you a 90% rating"?
Someone please bring back proper reviewing, where "scores" can go down to 0 again rather than starting at 80, and people aren't afraid to say that a product is junk or you're probably better off with the previous releases unless you're an absolute collector freak.
She's a Witch, She's a Witch......
I'm trying to get my head around the Reg ratings system. It seems to be something like:-
95%: Stupendous
90%: Great
80%: OK
75%: Meh
70%: Poor
65%: Awful
60%: Crap
55%: Total Crap
50%: Complete and utter Crap
45%: So unbelievably crap you won't believe it
40%: OK, so there is something worse than unbelievably crap
35%: Possibly the crappiest pile of crap ever invented.
30%: Definitely the crappiest pile of crap ever invented.
25%: Surely nothing can be crappier than this.
20%: Oh my GOD. I can't believe how crap this is.
15%: The reviewer killed himself because this is so crap.
10%: The Review killed himself after massacring the rest of the office in complete despair at the sheer crappiness of this thing.
Products scoring less than 10% will result in immediate Armageddon.
Extras?
Can someone please explain this to me?
I don't give a toss about extras, how it was made, what they had for tea on location, where it was shot, what the place looks like now or a thousand other piles of useless information. I just want to watch the film not go on Mastermind specialist subject, the bleedinng obvious. Sorry, a bit of crosstalk there.
Basically they've invented a format that can hold far too much and now need to justify the high price by conning the public into thinking they are getting more. Pretty soon they'll be claiming the FBI warning is part of the movie experience and having a "how it was made" extra for that as well.
Re: Tell me...
That's like giving Windows ME 80% because if you don't already have Windows 3.1/95/98/2000, it's great.
