Review of The Princess Bride (1987) by Filipeneto — 04 Jul 2021

This is one of those movies that almost everyone born in the Eighties has seen several times. I saw it myself, on television, even though I decided to revisit it now as my memory was no longer quite fresh. What I found is surprisingly worse than I expected, but it didn't leave me totally disappointed.

The story is based on a book and is very aimed at young audiences: a grandfather decides to read his sick grandson a fairy tale, recounting the ideal love between an orphan peasant girl transformed into a princess and her youth partner, who becomes a pirate to collect enough money for their wedding. To stay together, they will have to defeat a local king who is determined to marry her, then kill her and lead their country into war with a neighboring kingdom.

Does the plot sound confusing? In fact, I thought of it that way too, but if we ignore the loose ends, it turns out to be fun and entertaining us perfectly. Set somewhere in medieval times, in a place that is also fictional, it has, however, some anachronisms: the character Inigo Montoya, for example, is a Spaniard who should have been Castilian or Aragonese, since Spain, as a country, appears later of the Middle Ages. And although piracy and swordplay are practically timeless, the weapons used in the film date back to the 17th century, which was the golden age of piracy par excellence. Details that, however, I did not take into account because the film is a fantasy and not a historical film.

The cast is headed by Cary Elwes and Robin Wright. Both are the archetypal action hero and damsel in distress: slim, elegant, invariably blond and blue-eyed, he is a braggart, she is bland. The actors can be good, and they had other projects to prove it, but here they really don't have anything particularly remarkable to do. More interestingly, Mandy Patinkin's performance is full of Latin charisma and stereotypes, but I would say it's eerily similar to what Banderas would later do in "The Mask of Zorro". Was the actor inspired by Patinkin's work? Andre The Giant and Billy Crystal also deserve an applause for their work, with Crystal personifying moments of pure comedy. Chris Sarandon brought the villain to life in a conventional way, but collaborated very well with Christopher Guest.

Technically, it's a forgettable film, that permanently reminds us not to take it too seriously: despite having a reasonable budget, it feels cheap and sloppy. The sets could hardly be more artificial, the sound effects are primitive (even by the standards of the time, which gave us technically superior films), the editing is uninteresting and the cinematography is ugly, with washed-out colors and very low contrast. The soundtrack, then, is truly disastrous, one of the worst I've heard. Of all these problems, the choice of some elegant and visually beautiful filming locations, good props, good makeup work and a very detailed wardrobe stand out.