Inconceivable!!!

Rating: 10/10 (8 September 2006)

This is simply the greatest movie ever made!! Ever since I first watched this movie (so long ago that I don't even remember when that was) this has been a part of me and the way I live! The Princess Bride was originally written in 1973 as a novel by the Academy Award winning screenwriter, William Goldman. It was witty, romantic, and adventurous, in short: a perfect story. It looked like it could also spawn a spectacular movie. Or so Goldman thought. But for almost fifteen long years his efforts to turn it into a film ran into a wall of bad luck. Many times he almost got the film off the ground, and just as many times the production company would go under or the director would get sick. Finally, a nearly unknown director in the cinematic world stepped up and attempted to catch the eye of Mr. Goldman. His name was Rob Reiner, creator of the cult classic Spinal Tap. To Goldman's delight, Reiner had almost exactly the same great vision of the Princess Bride as himself! He immediately saw that his favorite work would blossom in Reiner's hands. And so, the movie we know today was cast and put into production.
The cast was full of little known players, but each one was tailor fitted to their parts. After having seen the auditions of over 200 girls, Goldman knew as soon as she stepped into the room that Robin Wright was the one he'd been looking for to play the beautiful Buttercup. Cary Elwes was plucked out of the obscurity of c-grade film and became the swashbuckling, witty, and handsome Westley. The great comedians Billy Crystal and Wallace Shawn were given the much-loved parts of the wisecracking Miracle Max and the furious and "smart" (he considered Plato and Aristotle morons) Vizzini. Tony Award winner Mandy Patinkin and lovable giant Andre were cast as the revengeful Spanish swordsman Inigo Montoya and lovable giant Fezzik. The rest of the cast was filled out with other superb actors from Peter Falk and Fred Savage as the hilarious Grandfather and grandson duo, to the Christopher Guest and Chris Sarandon as the cold, pain loving villains. All in all, The Princess Bride has one of the greatest casts I have ever seen! Add to this the amazing score by Mark Knopfler and (despite the low 16 million dollar budget) it looked like there was no way the Princess Bride could fail at the box office when it was released in 1987! Unfortunately, it was only a modest success, earning about 30 million total. But since then, great change for the better has come its way. Now, almost 30 years from its release, The Princess Bride has one of the largest fan bases ever and is considered by many as one of the best ever to come out of Hollywood.
Throughout time, the cult-classic has entertained millions and it's not hard to see why! With one of the freshest and most quotable scripts and a perfect cast, this is "not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairytale!" In the words of Vizzini himself, it is simply "Inconceivable!!"