I recently re-watched it. In my memory it was a terrific movie. In reality it was pretty ordinary. The only other movie I can recall being such a massive disappointment on re=watching was the Peter Sellers movie The Party.
The Princess Bride is, in my opinion, an extremely dull move with some absolutely stellar moments. The swordfight early on and the “I know that you know that I know” sequence are standouts. It also has some great ideas, like the legacy title of “Dread Pirate Roberts”.
Overall, I like the movie, but I do think its goodness has been played up a lot. I don’t think it’s a movie I’d sit down and rewatch all the way through, it’s a much better movie for looking up and remembering isolated scenes. It’s quotable, and I don’t think it’s bad, but I could really care less about the overall plot and the glue holding the good scenes together.
Of course, if someone loves it all to bits, or doesn’t find any redeeming scenes, that’s cool too. Personally I don’t think the movie really fits anywhere on the terrible/excellent continuum – I wouldn’t safely give it an A, a C, or an F. It’s a movie with a handful of great moments that, while excellent, IMO don’t really justify the whole framing story to get to them.
There really is no hope for some people, is there?
Awww, you big lug! Here, have a virtual hug from a total stranger.
I totally understand where you’re coming from, vis-a-vis your personal life circling the rim of the shitter. In fact, I’m pretty much in the same space as you are. Anyway, you might try watching a brilliantly funny movie to lift you out of your doldrums. Like, say, The Pr– oh, wait.
I’ve never seen the film (I see few films) or read the book. Have occasionally wondered whether I was missing out on something splendid; but per the general direction of this thread, I’m thinking “probably not”.
I, also, have found it a little difficult to adjust to the extreme “quotability and quotedness” of TPB, on Internet message boards – I find this cropping up on other boards as well as the Dope.
Me likewise. I always find it a relief to encounter another heretic-and-pariah re this matter.
The bits about “He’s mostly dead.” and the whole sequence about wheelbarrows and cloaks shortly after.
My 15 year old son watched part of it last night for the first time. He only caught the second half (around when Wesley is captured and tortured) and really liked it.
I like it. I don’t adore it, but it’s a fun and quotable movie. Even knowing all the best lines by heart, it’s still enjoyable to see them on screen.
OY! SIMSTER! What was that you were saying earlier in the thread? 
Also, I personally find very few things quite as funny as the “mostly dead” scene. That whole thing was glorious.
I agree… although I think the point of the movie was basically to set up the good parts, and a lot of people don’t really seem to get that.
I mean, the bit about the Dread Pirate Roberts, Vizzini’s whole bit about the poison, Inigo’s whole revenge fantasy, Miracle Max and “mostly dead”, Buttercup/Westley and “True Love” were all great, and Fezzik’s unrelenting common sense and clarity about everything in the face of everybody else’s tunnel vision about one thing or another were kind of what the movie was about, not the fairly standard plot.
Had they played it straight as a real adventure/romance movie with the same plot, it would have been absolutely ghastly, but by skewering so many of the adventure/romance tropes in such a tongue-in-cheek way, it became more than the sum of its parts.
That said, the parts don’t add up to much on their own, so in the end, it’s a funny and memorable movie, but not the sort of movie that has anyone gasping for breath from laughter, or gripping their seats in suspense or excitement.
I think ultimately that the quotability of many of the scenes gives the movie legs far, far beyond what it would normally have had. I mean, I saw it a couple times in college (1991-1996), and then saw it again in maybe 2009. My wife was much the same way, yet we still find ourselves making jokes about ROUSes and “mostly dead”, and most recently, comparing Oberyn Martell on the last season of Game of Thrones with Inigo Montoya. (“I am Oberyn Martell. Jou keeled my seester. Prepare to die.”). That sort of quotability doesn’t come around often in movies, and that’s a big part of its continuing success, IMO.
As a lover of The Princess Bride, I won’t argue the merits of the film with you. I just want to ask you, Leaffan, what are your top 5 funniest movies ever?
Good question! Probably something like:
Airplane!
The Meaning of Life
The Naked Gun
The Life of Brian
Sleeper
That kinda stuff. Subject to change tomorrow.
With a list like that, I can see why you would be disappointed with The Princess Bride. I like all of the movies you mention above, but definitely not for the same reason as I like The Princess Bride. I guess what I like the most about the Princess Bride is the irony that everyone in the movie who is absolutely sure of something winds up being dead wrong, every time. Inigo thinks he is the best swordman, he is not. Vizzinni thinks that no one can beat his giant, he is wrong. Vizzinni then thinks that no one can outsmart him, he is wrong. Buttercup trusts the Prince to send his four ships, and when Westley doesn’t show up, she actually believes that he is dead. Westley doesn’t think ROUS’s exist. And so on and so on. The only thing that anyone is right about is true love, and that is what carries the day. The only part that is supposed to be slapstick funny is the Billy Crystal/Carol Kane part, but that doesn’t even last very long. I don’t watch the movie for side-splitting laughter, and if that is what you expected I can understand your reaction.
And I also find it very funny, in a weird way, that at the bottom of the page right now one of the click-bait ads says :“Unbelievable: One-Third Of WrestleMania VI Competitors Now Dead” and it has a picture of Andre the Giant’s face. The only thing that would make it better was if the first word was “Inconceivable”…
The Princess Bride was meh. Now Blazing Saddles, THAT is a fine piece of gut-busting cinema!
I adore TPB, and I was already an adult (well… 18) when it came out. I didn’t see it the first time until later, on VHS.
The thing is, I don’t love it because it’s the funniest movie ever. It’s not. It’s has some cute humor, some clever lines and some silly situations, but it’s not hilarious. I love it because it’s a sweet movie - there’s a charming innocence to it. It’s a delight to watch. I like the movies on Leaffan’s list too, but “innocent” and “charming” does not describe them.
About a year ago we introduced my 9-year old son and 7-year old daughter to it. Before we started, my son was skeptical: “The Princess Bride? A movie about a princess who gets married? Is it all romantic and stuff?” In my head I laughed hysterically, because in that moment he was Fred Savage scrunching his face and asking “Is this a kissing movie?” And I had to reassure him that it had pirates and swordfights and revenge and torture. They both loved it.
This is what’s good about TPB.
One other thing about The Princess Bride is that is it not just funny. Mandy Patinkin’s performance always moves me when he is in the final moments of his battle with Count Rugan. The way he delivered the line “I want my father back, you son of a bitch!” always hits me hard. From what I understand, Mandy lost his father to cancer, and he drew upon that experience, that in that moment, Count Rugan was cancer. My dad died of cancer when I was 16, and I can’t even recall that scene without getting misty.
It may not be your cup of tea, but the fact that it is so memorable and such a part of our social conscience 27 years later indicates that the film did something right. Not very many movies have done that.
I too, adore The Princess Bride, but I also recognize that the film isn’t for everyone. Part of why I love it is because it came out when I was young and I remember seeing it many times growing up, so it has a nostalgia factor. But at the same time, part of growing up with it helped me appreciate the different layers of the film, that it can be enjoyed by children just seeing a simple fantasy adventure, but as I got older I appreciated a lot more of the humor. In fact, recently my niece and nephews were staying at my place, and they watched and really enjoyed it. I seriously doubt they got most of the humor.
That said, very little of the humor is of the laugh out loud type. The afforementioned sword fight between Wesley and Inigo is a perfect example of the type of humor, two men attempting to kill eachother, but still having ulterior motives in the contest, and the banter between them is just thoroughly amusing.
Personally, my favorite scene is the wine scene with Vizzini and Wesley. There’s an amazing irony in that he actually correctly identifies that he cannot choose either glass of wine, and really does out think Wesley, he just never considers the possibility that both could be poisoned.
In fact, as someone pointed out upthread, there’s the running theme of contradicting the fantasty tropes. That’s a big part of what makes so many of the quotable lines so memorable. For instance, Inigo spends 20 years training for revenge, but his great line he has planned when facing his father’s murderer just feels so benign, and then he just repeats it over and over. Or Vizzini, supposedly one of the smartest men alive, and he has a flawless plan, and yet Wesley perfectly nagivates the single flaw at every turn, that it really is inconceivable, and it’s the one thing Vizzini fails to conceive, that both glasses are poisoned, that leads to his downfall. And it just goes on.
At the same time, there’s plenty of other beloved classics I don’t get. As others mentioned Monty Python, while I don’t hate them, I don’t find them as memorable. There’s no shame in not loving The Princess Bride.
I recently had the chance to see The Princess Bride on the big screen, after not having watched it at all for several years, and it occurred to me then that The Princess Bride is pretty “talky” for a movie, or at least for an adventure-themed movie. It’s almost more like a play in that way. While there are definitely some memorable action scenes, much of the movie involves characters talking to each other. Heck, the two swordfighting scenes are memorable in part because of the dialogue! There are also several scenes where characters make fairly lengthy speeches about their pasts, scenes that in most movies probably would have been presented as a flashback.
I think this is part of the charm of The Princess Bride for those of us who enjoyed the movie, but I guess I can also see how the same “talky” scenes might seem slow, stagey, or cheap to some viewers.
I think it’s also noteworthy that Count Rugen isn’t really a funny villain. Although Prince Humperdink is definitely a baddie, he’s also a spoof of the traditional Prince Charming type. To some extent we’re meant to be laughing at him. The scene where Humperdink has what is probably his greatest triumph as a villain – the wedding – is definitely played for laughs. And while Humperdink fully intends to murder Buttercup and does his best to murder Westley, had he been killed in a bloody duel rather than being left humiliated but alive then I think this would have seemed an inappropriately dark ending for the movie.
Yet even though Christopher Guest is best known for his comedic roles, he plays Count Rugen as a pretty straightforward, old-fashioned villain rather than a parody of an old-fashioned villain. There’s still an element of humor there, and the character even gets a funny line or two, but he’s clearly one evil dude and it’s satisfying to see Inigo finally get his revenge.