Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Special Edition

It’s ironic, a low-budget masterpiece repackaged in a deluxe format. In this case it’s a delight, with bells and whistles sure to please all Python fans: director Terry Gilliam’s notes, sketches and posters, the short How To Use Your Coconuts that helped inspire the film, a 1974 BBC news report on the making of, and lots of other geek gear to help feed your obsessive-compulsive disorder. The film looks great, and being able to skip straight to John Cleese’s French taunting, or to any of the musical numbers now complete with a sing-along feature, is a definite plus. Is it a director’s cut? A whopping 24 seconds of cut footage is restored, gasp! The greatest extra may be the Japanese version with English subtitles. “Your mother is a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries” becomes “I can almost guess how you’ve grown up, what type of parents you have.” Pure Python silliness and then some.