Contemporary reviews were mixed.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times wrote in a favourable review that the film had "some low spots," but had gags which were "nonstop, occasionally inspired and should not be divulged, though it's not giving away too much to say that I particularly liked a sequence in which the knights, to gain access to an enemy castle, come up with the idea of building a Trojan rabbit."
Charles Champlin of the
Los Angeles Times was also positive, writing that the film, "like
Mad comics, is not certain to please every taste. But its youthful exuberance and its rousing zaniness are hard not to like. As a matter of fact, the sense of fun is dangerously contagious."
Penelope Gilliatt of
The New Yorker called the film "often recklessly funny and sometimes a matter of comic genius." Other reviews were less enthusiastic.
Variety wrote that the storyline was "basically an excuse for set pieces, some amusing, others overdone."
Gene Siskel of the
Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars, writing that he felt "it contained about 10 very funny moments and 70 minutes of silence. Too many jokes took too long to set up, a trait shared by both
Blazing Saddles and
Young Frankenstein. I guess I prefer Monty Python in chunks, in its original, television revue format." Gary Arnold of
The Washington Post called the film "a fitfully amusing spoof of the Arthurian legends" but "rather poky" in tempo, citing the running gag of Swedish subtitles in the opening credits as an example of how the Pythons "don't know when to let go of any
shtik". Geoff Brown of
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote in a mixed review that "the team's visual buffooneries and verbal rigamaroles (some good, some bad, but mostly indifferent) are piled on top of each other with no attention to judicious timing or structure, and a form which began as a jaunty assault on the well-made revue sketch and an ingenious misuse of television's fragmented style of presentation, threatens to become as unyielding and unfruitful as the conventions it originally attacked." 's helmet. His lines, "Tis but a scratch" and "It's just a flesh wound…" are often quoted. The film's reputation grew over time. In 2000, readers of
Total Film magazine voted
Holy Grail the fifth-greatest comedy film of all time. In a 2017 interview at
Indiana University in Bloomington, John Cleese expressed disappointment with the film's conclusion. "'The ending annoys me the most...It ends the way it does because we couldn't think of any other way'". However, scripts for the film and notebooks that are among Michael Palin's private archive, which he donated to the British Library in 2017, do document at least one alternative ending that the troupe considered: "a battle between the knights of Camelot, the French, and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog". Due to the film's small production budget, that idea for a "much pricier option" was discarded by the Pythons in favour of the ending with "King Arthur getting arrested", which Palin deemed "cheaper" and "funnier". On
Metacritic, the film has a score of 91 out of 100 based on 24 critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Spamalot in the original Broadway production of
Spamalot The film was adapted as the 2005
Tony Award-winning
Broadway musical
Spamalot. Written primarily by Idle, the stage show offers a revised plot, while retaining many jokes from the film. In May 2018,
20th Century Fox green-lit a film adaptation of the musical. Idle would write the screenplay and stage director
Casey Nicholaw would direct. Slated to begin filming in early 2019, production was delayed as a result of the
acquisition of 20th Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company. The project announced a
move to
Paramount Pictures on January 6, 2020, with Idle and Nicholaw still attached as writer and director, and
Dan Jinks joining as a producer. However, in 2021, Idle confirmed on his
Twitter account that the film would not be made because two of his former colleagues opposed it. A Broadway revival began previews on October 31, 2023 at the
St. James Theatre, with an official opening night of November 16, 2023. In 2013, the Pythons lost a legal case to
Mark Forstater, the film's producer, owing a combined £800,000 in legal fees and back royalties to Forstater for the derivative work of
Spamalot. To help cover the cost of these royalties and fees, the group arranged and performed in a stage show,
Monty Python Live (Mostly), held at
the O2 Arena in London in July 2014.
Games In 1996, the film adapted into the computer game
Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail. In 2022,
tabletop role-playing game company Exalted Funeral launched a
Kickstarter for
Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, an RPG mostly based on
Holy Grail while taking elements from other Monty Python productions, such as
Spam, the giant foot from
Flying Circus, the Judean revolutionaries from
Life of Brian, and the
Grim Reaper from
The Meaning of Life. The game was released in 2025, and won two Silver Awards at the
ENNIE Awards. ==See also==