Princess Bride, The (1987)
The Princess Bride (1987), directed by Rob Reiner.
A very light romantic comedy fantasy adventure, it's become more popular on home video than it was in the theater. Famously quotable.
I prefer slightly darker treatments: more of the Fire Swamp segment. Even if we say it's for children, the flying monkeys and witch's castle were my favorite bits of The Wizard of Oz (1939). Much of the material here is joke and skit-based. Billy Crystal makes it seem more like a Hollywood celebrity venue.
In the theater I understood very little of what Andre the Giant was saying, but now we have subtitles.
Mark Knopfler's score seems awfully "incidental". More 80s synthesizer menace.
Writer William Goldman provides one of the commentary tracks. He's still tickled with his work and praises the cast and crew:
On why Robin Wright never became a big star: she was too nice and didn't want it badly enough. Big stars don't have friends, just business associates and serfs.
There were several plans to film the book, but studio upsets always derailed them. The new boss cancels all previous projects because he wants total credit for future work.
Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin did their own swordfighting, but not the acrobatics. They practiced during every spare moment of the production.
The bit where Wright's dress catches on fire had been part of the script from the beginning, but when Goldman saw it being filmed he screamed "Her dress is on fire!", ruining the shot.
As he has often said, the success of a motion picture is a total crap shoot. No one knows what will work and what won't.
Director Rob Reiner does the other commentary track, sometimes interesting, sometimes trivial. He tells of meeting a Mob guy outside of the restaurant who quoted Inigo's "You killed my father..." speech back to him. Reiner was about to pee himself when: "I love that movie!" said the wiseguy.
Available on Blu-ray.
