Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology since the 1990s by Noel Brown (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews of Arthurian legend and of cinema. While Woller does analyze the brief songs in the film, her extended study of the film’s score fascinated me. Even though Neil Innes composed a score, the film’s creators opted to use stock music from a catalogue to purposefully construct “a classic bad Hollywood medieval soundtrack” (142). Citing the work of John Haines, Woller discusses the film’s soundtrack in relation to popular culture’s conception of medieval-sounding music (such as chants and trumpets). This context helps prove Woller’s claim that the score makes certain scenes feel cliché, musically heightening the film’s parodic intent. The final chapter tackles Spamalot, the popular 2005 stage musical that both adapts and expands on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Woller usefully presents the musical as containing two key elements: the Arthurian parody already present in the film and the added parody of musical theatre. Spamalot is a musical that knows it’s a musical, and many songs are parodies of common musical song types. Woller analyzes two main additions to the musical: the diva character of the Lady of the Lake (who, in the end, turns out to be Guinevere and marries Arthur) and the love story between Sir Lancelot and Sir Herbert. But I would have appreciated a fuller engagement with the briefly mentioned critiques of Monty Python’s “misogynistic and homophobic tendencies” (184). I admire the scope of this book, spanning from medieval texts to the twenty-first-century musicals inspired by them and addressing both stage and screen. Through her case studies, Woller certainly proves that the “purpose and uses of the legend have changed” in different retellings and that these “Arthurian musical retellings contribute to the continuation of the legend” (189, 191).