Wonderful stuff

Rating: 9/10 (11 May 2014)

In the course of a story which a grandfather is reading to his sick grandson, we see the adventures of farm boy Westley in pursuit of Princess Buttercup.
On one level, The Princess Bride plays absolutely fair with fairy story conventions - heroes are heroes, villains are villains, and weird in-between characters are weird in-between characters. The story plays out in a satisfactorily linear fashion, adhering to standard fantasy story tropes.
And then, on another level, The Princess Bride is a subversive deconstruction of the traditional stories it mimics. It is frequently very funny indeed, it boasts some wonderful performances (both Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin play their roles with a precise combination of straight face and tongue in cheek, and Wallace Shawn is simply hysterical), and it has the best sword fight for a long time. And it is endlessly quotable. Funny, exciting and charming, it is a film to treasure.