With the urging to continue from quite a few sources, yours truly returns to look down upon the movies of your choice. This time, we'll take a trick out of the recently mentioned Star Trek franchise and indulge in some time travelling into the past. To 1987, to be precise. A time I can say I hardly remember at all, seeing as it was before my birth. I can pretty firmly state I remember very little from the years directly after my birth too. But I digress. 1987, as is true with any year, certainly had alot of interesting things going for it. For us, however, we glean on a single object from this era of technological inferiority. The movie The Princess Bride. Take a moment to say that to yourself. If you imagined a medieval fantasy setting with sword-fighting, devilish forests that shoot fire from the ground, and torture devices capable of making a man scream loud enough for a kingdom to hear it, you certainly have a vivid imagination. I will explain further below.
Big explosions?
No. Not by today's standards anyway. The effects are nothing to write home about, but then again not much more can be expected from a movie in the 80's. Perhaps the real charm is that this movie manages to portray its' world and and keep you in the grips of it's amusing story without a single touch of CGI. A very welcome feature, I must say! Of course, everything looks crappy, but charmingly so. Even so, the movie has quite an excellent grasp on effects for it's time, and it works perfectly.
Failure to communicate?
Bad acting can ruin any movie, and with how many cringe-worthy old movies I've seen, I can honestly say that I was expecting nothing above horrendous when first introduced to this masterpiece. Fortunately, I was proven very wrong. The actors are all excellent in my book, and even though the entire movie(and the conversation within) is corny enough to be boiled and eaten off a stalk, this merely adds to the lovely feeling that is The Princess Bride. The acting never feels stale, and the entire movie not only manages to create a fairly compelling story, it makes fun of itself with great success while doing so. Humour is a large part of this movie, and it can certainly be seen at every turn. I had to rewatch the movie specifically to see if I missed any veiled prods at the fantasy genre, and it turns out I did. Wherever you go, there's a joke somewhere close by. And still this movie manages a somewhat serious tone, making for an example todays' actors (not to mention scriptwriters) could learn from.
Campfire not required?
Now i said before the movie is corny. It is, at every turn. But in a very good way. It's not the 'roll your eyes and sigh' kind, but the kind that makes you smirk faintly whenever they open their mouthes. The movie's plot is in fact a book, which is being read by a man to his grandson, and whatever oddities one might find in this movie, it remains credible due to the movie stating it is fiction by it's own volition. Overall, the story is fairly generic. Farmer falls in love with girl. Girl becomes a princess. Farmer becomes a super-pirate. Super-pirate sets out to free the kidnapped princess in a spiral of corruption, sword-fighting and taunting. Comes free with the famous line "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die."
In conclusion.
The Princess Bride is a brilliant movie, and definately worth seeing at least once, if nothing else, then for seeing how simple a movie can be, and do so well. If you're a roleplayer, you should be even more compelled to look at this for some classical inspiration, and a few great laughs. The laughs apply even without roleplaying experience, or interest!
The Princess Bride rating: 94% - This is what a movie should look like.
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