It’s an American movie about an American book read by an American man to his American grandson.
That’s Princess Buttercup thank you very much.
If you didn’t like it, you never really . . . tried. . .
Starring a number of British and French actors, everyone is playing non-Americans and the whole thing is set in Europe or a close analog.
I once thought as you did but I was, as you are now, wrong.
Besides, the dialogue in the movie is snappier.
This thread made me jones for it, so we watched it tonight. Still great as ever.
Yeah, I watched it tonight too.
For all that PB is a great movie and one of my favorites, the moments that get me are in the “making of” documentary:
Mandy Patinkin discussing “I want my father back, you son of a bitch!” in terms of his own father’s death from cancer; and Robin Wright choking up when she describes how Andre the Giant would keep her entire head warm with one hand.(And both my daughters know that the only way I will escort them down the proverbial aisle is if the priest/minister/imam/druid starts the ceremony with . . . you know.)
I first saw it after my father had died of cancer, and I think he spoke for anyone who lost a parent too soon. I can’t even recall the scene without getting a lump in my throat.
Truly inspired casting.
As you wish.
♪♪♪ “My love is like, a storybook story…” ♪♪♪
Actually, that was one of the few things that were arguably not so great, although it did get stuck in my head for a while.
A couple of years ago the subject of The Princess Bride came up at a party, and one of my friends said she wasn’t crazy about the movie but that her opinion had been colored by something that had happened to her in college.
She said “You know how in college sometimes a guy would invite you over to his room to watch a movie and it was not-quite-a-date? Well, on like three or four different occasions different guys did this to me and the movie was The Princess Bride. After the second time it just became obvious that someone had given them all the same advice about how if you watch The Princess Bride with a girl she’s going to love you. It was like that scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High where the guy says you should play Led Zeppelin when you want to make out. I don’t know if some guy at my school got lucky that way and told all his friends or if it was in Maxim or what, but it just got really old.”
What was really funny was that the guy she was dating at the time was sitting right there and he said “Man, that’s a great idea, girls love that movie but there’s still lots of fighting in it!”
No one ever tried to pull The Princess Bride trick on me, and I still do love the movie. I’m one of the few people I know who actually saw it in the theater when I was a kid. The Princess Bride was one of those movies that only really became a success on video, it did pretty poorly at the box office. I never understood this until I saw the original trailer on the DVD, and it’s terrible. I can see why people didn’t feel compelled to see the film, and worse still the trailer spoils a LOT. Anyone who’s curious can see it here on YouTube, but I encourage those who’ve never seen the movie not to watch it.
So what you’re saying is that you love me?
Man, that IS a terrible trailer. I read the book because I’d read about it in an anthology, and how the writer had been disappointed in the film’s success. I think that there was also a snippet of the book in the anthology.
That trailer is great for people who have actually seen the movie, but it is terrible as an ad.
Yeah, it would work pretty well as a collection of favorite moments (although the narration is cheesy), but for someone who hasn’t seen the whole movie then several of the moments shown like
Vizzini’s death, Humperdink summing up his plan to murder Buttercup and frame Guilder, and Count Rugen running away when confronted by Inigonot only spoil surprises but aren’t that funny or impressive if you don’t know the context.
When I decided to finally take a crack at TPB, I went around looking for the unabridged copy, but my library didn’t have it. Then I went to Amazon, where I was clued in by one of the top-rated book reveiws.
You forgot the Shrieking Eels. (and the R.O.U.S.'s) 
gasps I totally believed it. I don’t know whether to splutter “But … You … It … Damn it, Goldman, you lied to me!” or applaud.
Though now I think about it, I always wondered why I’d never heard of Florin or Guilder before if they were real countries, and how Jason felt about the way his father wrote about him …:smack:
I saw it when it came out and I have been very smart in not seeing it since.
The equivalent of a carbonated beverage that has gone flat.
Nah. I don’t have the attention span of Westley. You’re yesterday’s news.