In short: The Princess Bride (1987)

Rob Reiner’s fantasy comedy might very well be the most difficult to hate film of all times; perhaps because it is practically impossible not to love.

And there is truly a lot to love here, as most anyone reading this will know: be it the way William Goldman’s script shifts the emphasis of his own novel he is adapting here quite decidedly in many points towards something genuinely sweeter than the book is, further away from some of the book’s (not that) hidden bitterness. Be it how Goldman treats the clichés of the fairy tale romance he works with here with irony without things actually becoming cynical, as if he had had the realization that the dream of the world being kinder and better (or simply more surprising) in nature is not a thing only to mock even if one has come to see it as the cause of some of one’s own pain.

Also lovely are all of the performances, be it by a very young Robin Wright in not actually her first movie role as some say (let’s not even speak of the years in the soap opera mills she was still working in when this was made) playing Princess Buttercup in the only way to make the role work, absolutely straight; be it André the Giant being as charming as ever a wrestler was on screen; be it Mandy Patinkin doing a note-perfect ironic Errol Flynn. Why, I don’t even mind Billy Crystal’s scene here.

The film’s great trick apart from its tone is of course how genuinely funny it is, with a humour that’s not only based on all those many quotable lines but also an ability to not go for the most obvious joke all of the time but more often than not for the one that’s the decisive bit stranger and more off-beat.


And, you know: “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father. Prepare to die!”