Is that absolutely necessary?

Phrases often achieve a sort of iconic status within family culture. In ours, one of the standard exchanges is:

"Is that absolutely necessary?"
"Yes, 'e's afraid it is."

These days, this is usually said within the context of young master Jack doing something -- like spitting cheese all over someone's new outfit or overflowing a diaper in a particularly disgusting fashion.

The context is an exchange from Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, the first of his trilogy which also included Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. And as you can see, it covers the inexplicable rather well:

Time Bandits was a movie that I watched dozens of times when I was eight or nine -- which may explain rather much about me...