DVD Review: The Princess Bride - 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition

Everyone has certain movies that they fall in love with growing up.  It is always good to see as an adult that a movie that one remembers fondly is in fact a good movie.  It is nice to know that a movie that one loved is actually worth loving.  Such is the case with The Princess Bride, which comes to DVD, yet again, On November 13th. 

Last year the film was released in both a "Dread Pirate" edition and a "Princess Buttercup" one.  This year, it's the "20th Anniversary Collector's Edition" and it contains several new documentaries:  Princess Bride:  The Untold Tales, The Art of Fencing, and Fairy Tales and Folklore.  The DVD also features a game, True Love and High Adventure:  The Official Princess Bride DVD Game. 

For those unfamiliar with the story, The Princess Bride is a fairy tale about a man, Westley (Cary Elwes), and woman, Buttercup (Robin Wright), and their true love for one another.  As is always the case, the course of true love is not smooth, Westley leaves Buttercup to seek his fortune and is soon thought dead.  Buttercup, on the other hand, is forcibly engaged to the prince of the land, Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), who plans to have her murdered in order to start a war with the neighboring kingdom, Gilder. 

Also playing major roles in the film are Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, a Spanish swordsman, and Andre the Giant as Fezzik, not surprisingly a Giant.  These two individuals are part of the three man team run by Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) who have been hired to kidnap and murder Buttercup.  Westley's chase and eventual defeat of these three are one of the highlights of the film.  These scenes combine the best moments of action, adventure, and humor the film has to offer. 

The film does not end with the successful reunion of Buttercup and Westley at this point.  From here, the stakes are only raised, as the Prince and his right-hand man Count Tyrone Rugen (Christopher Guest) do everything in their power to ensure Buttercup's death and a war with Gilder.

The entire story of Westley and Buttercup is told inside the frame of a grandfather (Peter Falk) reading the tale of the two lovers to his sick grandson (Fred Savage).  One of the main purposes of the grandson is to balk at the moments of love and intimacy, and thereby help represent all the young boys watching the film.  It is a tactic that works as well now as it did twenty years ago.  The movie is not just about true love, it is full of swordplay, adventure, excitement, betrayal, and murder, but the "kissing bits," while brief and no more than a kiss, may have garnered a less than sympathetic reaction without the addition of Savage's character.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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