It's amazing when a movie can turn its ostensible flaws into assets.
I think the first time I saw The Princess Bride I was maybe a little older than its official target audience - I might have been ten or something (the movie came out when I was 1, so I was too young to see it in theaters).
There's a lot of absolute cheese to the movie - its transparently "in a sound stage" sets, the super-fake synthesized score, and even Andre the Giant's "I'm not a professional actor" performance. Yet all of these details do nothing to diminish the film. If anything, they enhance it.
In the wake of, I'd assume, Star Wars, the 1980s saw a lot of fantasy films. But in a lot of ways, I think that the Princess Bride kind of predicted a movement toward fourth-wall breaking, self-awareness, and metacommentary that I remember as a key aspect of children's entertainment when I was growing up.
One of my favorite books was The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka. Published in 1992, the book was a series of re-imagined children's tales with an ironic twist, like the main title story, which takes the Gingerbread Man and instead makes a man out of really stinky cheese that no one even wants to chase because his odor is so off-putting.
When its core plot elements are laid out, The Princess Bride is a bog-standard fantasy yarn (with very little in the way of actual magic). But basically every asset of the movie serves its core idea, which is to embrace the heightened emotions of fantasy (the romance between Wesley and Buttercup is unalloyed true love, capable of convincing anyone with a modicum of good within them to help their cause) and even push back on the urge to detach oneself from such strongly held emotions (the frame narrative with a young Fred Savage as a modern kid hearing the tale read by his grandfather, former angel Peter Falk, would, if written today, or perhaps about ten years ago, have the kid complaining initially that the book is "cringe") without surrendering a biting, clever wit.
The movie is so incredibly quotable, with brilliant lines and moments. (Liberally) adapted from the original book by its author, William Goldman (who also has a ton of other really impressive screenwriting credits, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men) the movie is also very economical.
In the movie's first act, when Buttercup is kidnapped by a group of thieves in a conspiracy to justify a war of aggression, we quickly come to understand that the lead criminal's two henchmen, Inigo and Fezzik, are actually quite decent guys. Inigo and Wesley (though not yet revealed to be him) are set to duel to the death, and yet their mutual respect and honor, and their appreciation for the art of swordsmanship, leads the two of them to what many have argued is the greatest sword fight in cinema as they more or less become good friends while ostensibly trying to kill one another (of course, in victory, Wesley merely knocks Inigo out). He and Fezzik have a shorter, but equally civil fight that ends with the benevolent bandit knocked out.
There's a real storybook kind of honor and chivalry at display, and Cary Elwes fits perfectly as a kind of reconstructed Errol Flynn-type.
The movie is just filled with charm - I even like that its fantasy world is quite slapdash, with fictional kingdoms like Florin and Guilder mentioned alongside such real places as Australia and Spain.
I have to imagine that among most Gen Xers and Millennials, at least, none of this is news to you. I don't know to what extent it's remained in the "staples of children's entertainment" zeitgeist for younger generations.
In the wake of his and Michele Reiner's horrifically tragic deaths, I've been reflecting on the incredible career Rob Reiner had as a director, and I'm struck by the amazing streak he had through the 80s and early 90s. His directorial debut was This is Spinal Tap (which more or less introduced the world to the mockumentary), and then he followed it with Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., Misery, and A Few Good Men, which are all classics (you could argue the hot streak continues with An American President, Ghosts of Mississippi, etc.) Not only were these really good movies, but they were all so varied and diverse in tone and subject matter. The guy just knew how to make a good film.
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