Go see something better (or worse!)

Rating: 3/10 (22 August 2007)

As has been said repeatedly in these reviews, this is a pale copy of "Princess Bride", with the emphasis on pale. Everything in this movie (acting, story, direction, score) is bland and tasteless. The protagonist Tristan is not so much a hero as just the guy in the center of the lens, wandering around with a dumb look on his face. Claire Danes, too, sleep-walks her way through every scene. Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro easily outshine everyone else anytime they're on screen (never together, sadly) but the script they've been given is so weak that it's just sad to watch actors of their talent trying to make something of it. It's literally pitiful to see. (Pfeiffer's been AWOL for quite a while, but does DeNiro really need a paycheck so badly? Can we pass a hat for him?)
One of the too-few bright spots: the somewhat Python-esquire banter between the ghosts of the murdered princes as they observe the goings-on like spectators at a ballgame.
This film is not BAD, per se; if it had been just a bit worse it might have been enjoyable as a laughably bad movie, but I couldn't even work up interest enough to hate anything about it. It's just so... MEDIOCRE. Imagine a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal. Lukewarm. With a glass of tapwater.
I've not read the graphic novel source material for this film, but I can't imagine that it was as mediocre as the resulting movie; no one would have been inspired to turn it into a motion picture. If you must waste two hours on this, at least wait for its second run in the dollar theaters. In a few months, you won't remember ever having seen it.
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My prediction proved true. Now in 2010, I had to read my OWN review twice to recall this movie at all, and even at that, my clearest memory is of an afternoon wasted.