For those of you who have seen the movie -- all of you, I hope -- it's the scene where King Arthur cuts the knight's arms and legs off. If you haven't seen the movie, that probably doesn't sound very funny, but the fact that his opponent keeps pluckily fighting and taunting Arthur, despite being increasingly limbless, left me absolutely rolling on the ground when I first watched it at about age 14.
If you want another indication of my love for this movie and its origins deep within my maturation, around about 1987 I memorized the Constitutional Peasant scene from Holy Grail in order to perform it at a talent show at the place I used to vacation in the summer. It wasn't repeat viewings of the movie that allowed me to memorize it, as I'd seen the movie either zero or one time at that point, but the skit had been extracted for one of their comedy albums, which I listened to constantly. I played all three parts on stage, and to this day I can still recite every single word of that probably three-minute scene.
You'll be glad to know I did not subject anyone to this recitation when we watched it together on Friday night, something I had secretly hoped might be possible relatively soon, and became so when my 11-year-old's friend, who was sleeping over, requested it. I'd had the discussion with my wife whether the movie was appropriate when I'd been planning to show Time Bandits at a movie night at a friend's house last year, which had to be cancelled due to COVID. At this movie night they have a tradition of showing a short film beforehand as an appetizer, and I thought it would be fun to watch the armless and legless knight scene as a perfect preparation for the sense of humor in Time Bandits. At that time, my wife judged the scene too gory for the kids who would be in attendance, and I'd settled on the Knights of Ni instead -- though of course the viewing never happened.
I'm not sure if something changed in her mind since then, or if it being requested by the guest was the deciding factor, but we chose to go forward with Holy Grail during our pizza dinner on Friday night.
Initially I did not think I would watch the film, even though I desperately wanted to. I felt like I'd seen it relatively recently (2017), but that wasn't the main source of my hesitation. Rather, it's that your son doesn't typically want his dad hanging around when he's trying to watch a movie with his friend on a sleepover.
What changed this was the idea that the kids should start eating their pizza while watching the movie, and because the adults were eating the same pizza at the same time for our dinner, we would start watching the movie with them. My son did not seem to want me to bugger off, so the default choice was to continue watching the movie.
Part of the reason I was desperate to watch it was that I love to partake in my kids' first viewing of one of my favorites. It was the same reason I was disappointed when my wife suggested a viewing of Back to the Future on a playdate a couple years back, and why she was disappointed when I went ahead with a viewing of The Princess Bride with the kids while she was out of town.
But specifically in the case of Holy Grail, I wanted to see if the same sort of humor birthed in me by Monty Python could be birthed in my son -- either son, really, but the eight-year-old is probably not ready for it yet (though he was also in the room, as you will soon see). That was something I shared -- do still share -- with my own dad, and I wasn't much older than this when it first got started. (I have even performed Monty Python with my dad, but I think times have changed enough that I'm not deluding myself into thinking this would or could happen with my sons.)
Well, it was a total failure.
My son laughed at exactly one scene: the scene where the French taunter catapults a cow at the knights of the round table, and follows with a fusillade of chickens and other small barnyard animals. My son was cracking up hysterically in that scene. Not to the same extent that I cracked up during my original viewing of the armless and legless knight, but enough that I thought this movie was going to be a win for him.
Nope.
He bailed by the scene that I always think is the worst in the movie, The Tale of Sir Galahad, in which Michael Palin's Galahad finds himself in a castle full of horny women. I have always sat there stony-faced during this scene, and my son did that one better: He got up off the couch and said he was going to do something else.
"Oh just wait," I told him. "It's almost over and it gets better again after this."
"I don't like any of the movie," he clarified. "It's bad."
What happened to those catapulted animals?
My first indication of possible failure should have been that he sat there stony-faced not during one scene, but many, particularly the armless and legless knight. The catapulted animals should have more obviously registered to me as the exception than the rule.
The timing of his departure was specifically that the topic of conversation became sex, which makes my son squeamish. He doesn't seem bothered by it the many times it comes up in our viewings of Futurama, but in a more realistic context it seems to really agitate him. And if I'm being honest, that's the point I'd bolt from the movie if I weren't enjoying it, and if I bolted from movies as a general practice, because The Tale of Sir Galahad is bad.
There was a chance to win him back, because the guys had not yet had their dessert, and it makes sense to keep watching while you eat your ice cream. This was also my son's friend's hope, since he was the driving force behind the viewing, and was constantly talking about how good a scene was going to be, and even spoiling elements of it -- something that couldn't have helped matters.
But the Knights of Ni didn't make him laugh either, so that was that. I continued watching the film but they didn't.
One of the things I thought was sort of uncool about my son's abrupt departure from the film was the way it risked the displeasure of his friend. Since we've just moved, I think it's especially important to remind the friends from the old neighborhood, whom it takes an effort to see, that you are cool and fun. Storming out of a movie your friend chose is not a great way to do that, even if you say that the friend can continue watching. (He didn't. He's already seen the movie obviously, and at least in his case he recognized it was good to do the thing his friend wanted to do.)
So I don't have a lot of hope for Monty Python making a convert of my older son. At least not yet.
The funny thing is that it looked like it could have been a win for my younger son ... if not for the gore mentioned earlier.
Although he came in with a mind closed to the film -- in part because the poster on Netflix shows a rabbit with blood on his teeth -- he was kind of warming to it against his better judgment. In fact, he was visibly becoming interested in the prelude to the legless and armless knight, more properly referred to as the black knight, in which the knight fights another opponent. My son thought it was hilarious when he kicked that knight in the balls, and it looked like he was hooked.
He did not find it so hilarious when the black knight thrusts his sword through the helmet of the other knight, killing him and letting obviously fake blood spew forth.
We know this is sort of part of the joke, though it's probably bloodier than it needs to be, but my eight-year-old? All he saw was a man killed in gruesome fashion.
And it didn't help that the man who killed him was then deprived of his arms and legs -- even though the fact that he was not bothered by it probably mitigated some of that.
So one son didn't care about the violence but didn't find it funny, the other found it funny but cared about the violence. I guess it's good he also bailed well before the scene where Lancelot storms the castle and kills half of the wedding party, or where a flying rabbit bites out the knights' throats.
Now I wonder if we might have burned our best opportunity to give birth to Monty Python fans.
Had we waited a few years longer -- to the age I was when I first learned Python -- we might have gotten an older son who was better able to get the humor (and not get turned off by "old movies"), and a younger son who was better able to withstand the violence (and not get turned off by "old movies").
It's hard with these things. You are so eager to show these great things to your kids that maybe you sometimes jump the gun.
Then again, I blame my son's friend. I was not planning a viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail anytime soon -- at least not outside my own fantasies.
Either way, the gun has been jumped, as it was for Star Wars movies. They like the Star Wars TV shows but not the Star Wars movies. Maybe the key would be to show them Monty Python's Flying Circus.
I do wonder, though, if Monty Python and the Holy Grail, being an "old movie," ever really stood a chance, even if the humor had been more accessible and even if the violence had been less graphic. Curing them of their dislike of things made before their lifetimes may only come with maturity, and maybe when they're more mature they'll feel inclined to give movies like this a second chance.
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