Some people quote Steve Martin; some people quote The Simpsons; but Monty Python quoters are a world unto themselves. This subculture is continually renewed as geeky teenagers (who weren't even born when The Meaning of Life, the Python troupe's last movie proper, came out) immerse themselves in absurd British wordplay and sneering, sniveling, or affectless characters. Now, the rerelease of Monty Python and the Holy Grail--featuring a stereo soundtrack and around 23 seconds of previously unseen footage--promises to bring more into the fold of this alarmingly widespread cult.

Why, exactly, do people persist in repeating Monty Python skits? Yes, the material is funny. (In fact, it's amazing just how funny this movie remains; it drags a bit toward the end, but a good 80 percent of it is still crisply comic.) But people quoting Monty Python are not funny--nor, really, are they trying to be, at least not in the same sense that Michael Palin and John Cleese are. The people who quote Monty Python are using a kind of jargon, a private language that separates them from those not of their tribe, much like the jargon used by car mechanics, bureaucratic politicians, or computer programmers. Unfortunately, quotations differ from standard jargon in that, by and large, they contain no additional information; they reference a cultural identity and nothing else. As a result, when overused, they are really fucking annoying.

If you've seen the 1998 romantic comedy Sliding Doors (and I'm not encouraging you to do so), you understand what I'm talking about. Poor John Hannah, a fine English actor, plays a man whose only identifying characteristic is bursting out with "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" while at dinner with friends. This supposedly attracts the movie's heroine, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. But though the movie's script requires Paltrow to laugh, you can see in her eyes a kind of panic, an as-yet-unarticulated awareness that she is trapped in a room with someone stuck in a loop--someone who once had the genuine, giddy experience of finding something uniquely funny, and who is now endlessly repeating that experience in his mind, hoping beyond hope that he can still fulfill some yawning emotional need. It's a bit like being with a heroin addict or someone who compulsively watches pornography. But junkies and masturbators at least get new product; Monty Python hasn't produced anything new in almost 20 years. (A 1994 repackaging of old material was titled, with bracing honesty, Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time.)

This perverse fandom obscures the virtues of the movies themselves, which glitter even more brightly in the cinematic context of Jim Carrey and Saturday Night Live alumni. The Python crew--Cleese, Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, and Terry Gilliam--are a kind of anti-Carrey: They don't contort their faces into rubbery masks, hoping that you'll revert to an infantile giggle; they don't beat you over the head with every joke, hoping that if they shriek "This is funny!" loudly enough you'll believe it; they don't insipidly tug your heartstrings, hoping to make you sympathize with painfully unreal characters. The Pythons go about their business stealthily, armed with a keen sense of timing, the ability to mix clever wit and nonsense in dizzying measures, and a genuine delight in the petty, obsessive nature of human beings, even if they're legendary knights or three-headed giants. They assume that stupidity deserves to be mocked and they understand that a deadpan pause can speak volumes. Add to this the freshly developing cinematic eye of Gilliam (longtime Python animator and Holy Grail co-director, who would go on to make Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen), and you have a miraculous combination.

It's dismaying that no one has come along to take this vein of verbal satirical comedy in a new direction; recent gems like Rushmore and Election owe more to the American screwball comedy tradition than Python. Faced with the likes of Rob Schneider, it's no wonder that anyone with a taste for wit has fled back into Monty's arms. If that's what it takes to get you through the night, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the troupe at its best.