tylerkom

Monty Python, for all the naysaying that this review will proceed to do is fabulously influential and deserves most of the praise lavished upon it. For the price of a movie ticket (or your streaming service of choice), you are provided a torrent of jokes per minute for its 91 minute runtime. As far as sketch comedy goes, a classic criticism is that that jokes are not that nuanced or layered, so The Holy Grail makes sure to not overstay its welcome with its runtime. Very punchy. I commend that huge commitment to the bit, between the low budget looking cinematography, to costumes, and even writing, it's all very thematic and works synergistically with each other. It's truly one of a kind, often mimicked but never equaled. You can see much of the absurdist and fourth wall breaking comedy writing in today's entertainment has deep roots in this comedy troop.

With as much respect as I can give it, the film doesn't work for me. It's entertaining in a blow-air-out-of-your-nose type of way, but hardly laugh out loud funny for me. The deeply British, fourth wall breaking, absurdist surrealist humor can be super hit or miss. There is little set-up for jokes and, for me, there is no cadence of setting then breaking the pattern as in classic comic theory because the jokes are all over the place. I'll also criticize the film for beating, dragging, and beheading all of the dead, rotting corpses of their jokes. They commit hard to their jokes, but it's the epitome of beating a dead horse. I understand that this is a very sketch-comedy coded idea, but history has shown that it's an idea that rarely works. My last complaint is hardly a criticism, but I'll just throw out there that this film is all jokes, no content. Which I think is completely fine as a concept, but there's no real lasting arc, character development, or takeaways. It's something comedy films rarely do nowadays for good reason: it's not a satisfying way to write a film. Clearly, not many people are bothered by it here, but even other works with the same type of humor (Hitchhiker's Guide or Rick and Morty, anyone?) have a more satisfying arc than this film.

The film knows what it is and never strays from it. I respect the film but it just doesn't really work for me. Give it a try.

The Sting is the legendary 1976 reinterpretation of a 1930s caper film. And its legendary reputation is quite earned as it deftly takes us from sequence to sequence, tightly keeping what needs to be in, and what doesn't, out. The performances from our leads in Robert Redford and Paul Newman are constantly fun and believable. They are truly one of the great cinema mentor-mentee duos. I also love that the film treats the audience with much respect, such that the discerning viewer understands the whole con, the whole time without spoon feeding. Also a nice storytelling tool. The winks and nods to an earlier form of filmmaking were nice and occasionally funny, although I think there are clearly techniques and motifs that we have rightfully left in the past. That said, there is a great understanding of the same visual storytelling prowess that Chaplin and Keaton utilized. The music is excellently placed, although as previously mentioned, they use an old fashioned style of sound engineering that leaves backgrounds almost completely silent at times which is quite disturbing. I think more use could have been made of music and general background noise without giving up the old timey charm.

Despite those little reservations, there's not much to dislike in such a simple but wonderfully executed film. As mentioned, some old timey "authenticity" flavored filmmaking are a bit jarring and the story is quite predictable, including the twist. That doesn't mean it doesn't bring it home though. If there's anything more damning, perhaps it's the unfocused secondary plot of revenge or greed. Despite how little attention was given to these things, I can appreciate that they had a winning, entertaining piece of film here that didn't have much need to delve into the human condition.

It's not a trick! One of the preeminent capers in history earns its title.