Sweet fantasy where tongue in cheek on occasionally goes overboard.

Rating: 5/10 (1 November 2015)

While this was the film that introduced Robin Wright to movie audiences, if you were watching the daytime soap opera Santa Barbara in the mid-1980s you already knew her as the sweet Kelly Capwell, the rich heiress who was as long suffering as her character is here. Taking time off from that show to make this movie, it was only a matter of time before she would leave the world of daytime TV behind and go on to become a bona fide movie star. Truly likable on screen, she is the perfect movie heroine. unlike other ones who have come and gone since the 1980s, she has proved herself to be a talent as well as a beauty, and performance here is sign of better things to come.
As told by grandfather Peter Falk to his grandson, this ends up being a lesson to put down your video game and pick up a book, because sometimes as Belle in Beauty and the Beast would find, great adventures can take you into great places through paper, not a computer screen. I can just see the illustrations because this is a visual treat, and while at the time the whole narrative seemed unnecessary, it proves an important life lesson 25 years later.
The handsome Cary Elwes plays the hero, her childhood love who has been unfortunately separated from her and now as a bandit, is all of a sudden reunited with her. But it's too late she is now engaged to marry the evil Prince Christopher Guest, Elwes' various obstacles to rescue her from kidnappers Wallace Shawn and Andre the Giant. Shawn is hysterically bad, not in his performance but in the way he keeps repeating the word inconceivable, making you laugh even more at this idiot of a character he is playing. When Elwes and Shawn go up against each other in a battle of the wits, you know this evil character's stupidity will be what ultimately destroys him, and the results are hysterical.
Sometimes, however the film does go overboard, making buffoons out of various minor characters who are on screen so minimally that you wonder why the writers had them do the things that they do. Guest's elderly father, the king, is a senile old man who doesn't even hear Wright's pleas for help when she indicates that she is going to kill herself. All of a sudden when the minor character of a bishop comes on to marry Wright and Guest, his distracting stutter seems unnecessary and simply there to give juvenile audiences something to laugh at. In a sense it is cruel and ridiculous.
However, a supporting performance by Mandy Patinkin as the revenge seeking swordsman who helps Elwes in his quest gives Pantinan a role to really sink his teeth into. He reminds me of the many dashing heroes at Errol Flynn had played years before, and this is a far cry from the types of roles Pantinkan had played on Broadway and on TV. There are some truly horrific moments too, scary enough for young children to be forewarned about, but for adults a reminder of the type of films that Ray Harryhausen used to make in the 1960s and 1970s. An encounter with a huge rat like creature truly is frightening! The film does have an old fashion style to it, making it a great pastiche in an error when such films as Excalibur, Willow, Legend and Ladyhawke took audiences into a world of fantasy that was sorely lacking in most motion pictures. Still attractive to look at, it merely suffers only because of the juvenile nature but has obtained a cult status that seems well deserved.