Fabulously witty entertainment

Rating: 10/10 (26 September 2013)

I was just reading through the reviews of this while watching it again. I had to add to them, not to agree with fellow lovers but to rebut the flaws in the reviews of the haters.
People are saying it's vacuous ( okay, my word not theirs) and highly flawed. They've missed the point. Clearly the special effects are deliberately bad, as is the name Buttercup. Much of the humor is located in its tongue-in-cheek cheesiness. The dialogue is incredibly corny, not because the writing is poor but because it's just that clever. The actors deliver the lines perfectly and together, they all make this film laugh out loud funny.
The story within a story format is great and Peter Falk's delivery of his lines is spot on. The bad guys are deliciously bad, the albino's glorious and Billy Crystal steals the show. You don't need to have seen this back in the 80s to love it. I was introduced to it in the late 90s and a friend introduced one of her mates to it just this year. He loved it.
You have to approach this film in the right spirit. If you do, it's a hilarious ride. So it's not a feminist triumph. Who would expect it to be? Since when are fairy tales full of women doing it for themselves? There are actually some nice messages in the film about loyalty, love and sportsmanship but it's not designed as a commentary on human nature so stop looking for that and just enjoy the wonderful characterisation, the humor, the deliberate ridiculousness ( I mean, honing a dagger on a rounded rock -really?!) and the memorable (and highly quotable) lines.
It's smarter than it looks.