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The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of My All Time Favorite Movies
Review: There are few movies that are as enchanting as The Princess Bride. It is a light hearted comedy about love, adventure, and revenge. The entire cast of characters add a unique charm to the script. The story revolves around the love of Westley and Buttercup, and their quest to be reunited. The plot is driven by the evil Prince Humperdink who wants to start a war with a neighboring country by killing his bride Buttercup. Westley enlist the add of the would-be assassins to overthrow the villains.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This Movie Is Awesome!
Review: Now I realize this movie is is old and a year before my time, but it is still one of the funniest, warmest and most exciting movies I have ever seen! I absolutely loved how things turn out for Wesley and Buttercup. And Inigo, who could forget about him and his loved lines? The cast was well put together and the acting was well done. But if you're not all into the fairy tale and romance stuff, then maybe this movie is not for you. But then again, you never know! I recommend this movie to people of all ages!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Have fun raiding the castle
Review: A great movie that makes you remember why fairytales are fun and movies should be made. Superior performances by Patinken and Elwes. The movie is oft quoted and well loved by guys and gals alike. This is a movie that belongs on everyones shelves.

It is a 5 star film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Special Edition" is worth it
Review: If you're looking to buy the Princess Bride on DVD - spend the extra couple of bucks and get the Special Edition version.
Whereas on many DVDs being released today, the "bonus" stuff is hastily thrown together and shoddy - here, you get some real insight into the making of the movie.
With a great documentary, and home movies from Cary Elwes, we get a good idea of what it was like to make this movie. From the struggle to find a director for the project, to what Andre the Giant was like on the set - this DVD shows us a lot.
There's also a few easter eggs on the DVD...nothing too spectacular once discovered, but they're fun to find and have.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My favorite movie of all time!
Review: Romantic, funny, sweet, hilarious, beautiful, imaginative, this one has it all. And a great sound track too. There is no better love story to watch with your girlfriend/boyfriend, husband/wife, and yes, even the kids (my kids love to watch this movie with me!).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great cast +Great director = Teriffic Movie
Review: Well, what can I say about a movie that simply has the best of all worlds. Starting with the director Rob Reiner and his terrfic casting job, he could not have had a better cast. Every actor/actress did a fantastic job and made this movie one for the ages. The Princess Bride has a little bit of everything from torture to true love. I cannot put into words how great this movie is you have to buy it and see for yourself

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Romantic!
Review: My favorite film as a child! The fight between the Dred Pirate Wesley and the Spaniard was oh do to drool. I dig the giant and the bad guys were funny. Great Movie!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring...
Review: This movie is one of the worst movies I have ever seen because it was predictable and showed no flavor. I'm not the biggest fan of "fairy tale" stories, but I did like Ever After.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: a wax fruit with too much syrup
Review: I should like this movie, I loved the book and the film is well written, acted, directed and generally well made. In short there are no real flaws in the adaption or presentation of this film which should harm it. So why don't I love it.

Well first off, the music score is far too distracting, yes the music itself is well compoised and is as skillful in its way as the rest of the film, but it is played back, for budgetary reasons I believe, on poor synthesizers, in much the same way as Ladyhawke. The highly artificial sound combined with cinematography that feels uninspired takes me soo far out of the film that I find it impossible to get absorbed.

But the bigger problem is that while the script is clever and witty and faithful narratively to the book, a real undercurrent, which ran through the whole book is simply missing.

The book is a masterful exercise in post-modern self-refering narrative style, at every oportunity the book pulls back from its "moment" and attacks its own sincerity and what you have is a book which attacks the very conventions which it uses and not only that but does so very darkly. There is a vast gleeming dark cynical edge about the book which the film COMPLETELY ignores, favoring an audience-pleasing desperation which is shocking having come on the tails of Spinal Tap. In short the book challenged its readers with its calvalier attitude, the movie coddles its audience with its artificial and sacherine sincerity.

Watching the film feels to me like watching a dog soo needing to be loved and appreciated that it ingratiates itself and excites itself to the point of urinating on itself.

the film screams in large unsubtile letters LOVE ME!! LOVE ME PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE.

To me this is just painful.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I do not think it means what you think it means
Review: I remember when I first saw this movie, around age 13, I had no idea who the Man in Black was through the entirety of the first act. Sure, it's apparent now, given the benefit of hindsight, but because of the actor's anonymity at the time I never made the obvious connection. On top of that, most of the rest of the cast was unknown to me as well (except for the one non-actor, Monsieur Roussimoff, a.k.a. Andre the Giant). The sweeping anonymity of the company allowed the film to do two things: first, the audience isn't distracted by the presence of the Big Star; and second, unknown actors allow for no preconceived notions of their characters. Which in turn allows the filmmakers to subvert character types, and insert some true surprises into the story.

Which, to make a long point even longer, is the whole ethos of the film

William Goldman's book "The Princess Bride", on which this film is based, intended to tell only the 'good parts' version of the story of Westley and Buttercup. That is, it would leave in the high drama and action and romance, while curbing the back-stories and superfluous exposition. William Goldman, in his role as adaptor of the book into a screenplay, remains fiercely loyal to this proposition. He's constructed a framing device, wherein a grandfather is reading to his sick grandson, which allows him to make meta-fictional comments on the seemingly typical fairy tale being told. In doing so, however, he subverts the fairy tale's typicalness, making it much more surprising and revelatory. At one point the grandson worriedly asks about the fate of the villain: "Who kills Humperdinck?" The grandfather calmly answers, "No one. He lives." Which is not only a true statement, for that is exactly what happens, but it doesn't even come close to ruining the end of the story. On the contrary, it increases the suspense, and makes what does happen quite astonishing.

Rob Reiner, in only his third time out in the director's chair, does a wonderful job of translating Goldman's script to the screen. He utilizes elements, whether by choice or by budgetary restraints, that would at first appear incongruous, but work as a whole to keep the audience off-balance, and thus more receptive to the surprises the movie has in store for them.

The acting is, stylistically, all over the place. It ranges from the unabashed over-the-top passion of Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya), to the bumbling buffoonery of Wallace Shawn (Vizzini), to the gentle anti-acting of Andre the Giant (Fezzik), to the unsubtle Snidely Whiplash villainy of Chris Sarandon (Prince Humperdinck), to the Borscht Belt mugging of Billy Crystal (Miracle Max), to the icy malice of Christopher Guest (Count Rugen), and the stark realism of Robin Wright (Buttercup, the title character). No two actors take the same road, but they all somehow arrive at the same location. Cary Elwes, playing the hero, is the only one who falls easily into all these styles, as the situation demands it. He is menacing, suave, cool, funny, athletic, simple, sweet, fierce, etc., etc., etc. Elwes and Patinkin are the standouts for me -- their swordfight atop the Cliffs of Insanity is technically brilliant, literate, and extremely entertaining -- but the entire cast effective. Even the smaller roles (British comedians Mel Smith and Peter Cook each have brief but memorable one-joke cameos) make their mark.

The film's musical score, composed by 'Dire Straits' frontman Mark Knoplfer, swings and sways from moment to moment. In one, he uses stark, bouncy lines to underscore a simple scene of Fezzik and Inigo trading rhymes. In the next, he layers synthesized strings to call up the gravity of the Man in Black's chase. My only problem with the music is the song written for the closing credits: it's weepy and melodramatic, without the sense of subversive fun that had prevailed up until that point.

The sets and scenery switch back and forth between real and obviously fake. Filmed in and around the English countryside, most of the outdoor locations (the severe valley, the woods) breathe reality and beauty into the story. Others, such as the Fire Swamp, the Pit of Despair, and the plateau above the Cliffs of Insanity, have the phony feel of a Hollywood soundstage. Again, the film keeps the audience on their toes.

So now that I am 27 instead of 13, and know back-to-front the filmmographies of all the actors involved, and have seen the film more than a dozen times, and can quote lines from it at the drop of a hat, do I find it any less appealing than on that first viewing? Of course not. Goldman and Reiner's film rewards multiple viewings, with its wit, its playfulness, and most importantly, its subversiveness. Will there ever be a time when I tire of watching it? A time like that is right now, as Vizzini might say, "inconceivable".


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