Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, humans and aliens, allow me to introduce to you a true cinematic epic, a timeless classic of the silver screen, a modern masterpiece...
Hmm, maybe the above was a bit over-exaggerated? Alright, we'll scrub the cinematic epic and silver screen classic bit, I'm sticking by masterpiece though, because it bloody well is!
What is? I hear you ask breathlessly ..... Oi! Stop laughing over there!
It's The Princess Bride of course. The single greatest over the top fantasy/revenge/comedy/romance movie ever to delight my formerly innocent eyes. They're jaded and cynical eyes now by the way! The movie that made revenge look cool and edgy, that made Sicilians look slimy, that made marriage look scary and pirates look dashing. The Princess Bride!
*Looks at all the blank, confused faces*
Sheesh! Bloody hell!!
You know it's shocked me on more than one occasion the amount of people I know who've never seen, or even heard of this film. Another shock is those who dismiss it as crap without having seen it, purely because it's a fantasy tale.
Can I call people morons in a kind way?
Ah fuck it, if you dismiss a film 'cause you ain't seen it then you're a moron! Ha it's my blog I'll say what I wish, deal with it MoFo's! ... I'm smiling and saying that friendly like!
Anyhoo back on topic. The Princess Bride! I'm not going to do a review here, those rare souls who've read previous entry's will know I don't do reviews, well I don't think they're reviews, I prefer to call it an overview.
Anyhow our story starts off, kind of, with young Stablehand Westley (our hero). Stablehand Westley like any young man his age dreams of chopping people up in to bacon sized chunks and wooing beautiful, rich women (the chopping people up dream may not be strictly true).
As luck would have it (and a convenient plot), young Westley becomes the infatuation of the beautiful and rich Buttercup. Awwwww! See, you can always achieve your dreams if you live in a fairytale land.
If memory serves aright (to my shame I've been a few years without seeing the film), Buttercup is a bit of a dominatrix at first, constantly ordering poor Westley about. Bloody privileged people huh? However, eventually, true love develops between them ... it is fantasy after all.
Buttercup and Westley enjoy an unspecified amount of time getting to know each other and doing all the things that loved up couples do. Fortunately we're spared from watching those antics! For reasons I can't quite remember, Westley then decides that he must make his fortune and promptly heads off for sea. Doesn't that strike you as odd? He's getting all hot and heavy with a stunning bank account and then decides to run off to be a sailor? Kinda screams commitmentphobe to me, hmm! No wonder us men are so stereotyped when that's happening on the big screen! Westley I had high hopes for you, now you've left me sad...
The abandoned Buttercup lives on in hope that her wayward beau will return to her, we all cling to something I suppose, then she receives dire news. Westley has been cruelly murdered by the Dread Pirate Roberts!
Dread Pirate Roberts? Doesn't quite have the same menacing ring to it as Blackbeard, does it?
Poor abandoned Buttercup isn't destined to spend her life alone though. Riding in to her life comes the brave (cowardly) and dashing (idiotic) Prince Humperdinck.
The Pratty Prince is on the hunt for a woman who can see past his title and hate him for who he really is. That's not hard trust me, watch the film and you'll agree. What Humperdinck lacks in personality and wit he more than makes up for with complete buffoonery.
So Prince Buffoon meets Abandoned Buttercup and they fall in apathy and agree to marry.
Prince Humperdinck is a bit of an evil twit as well and he wants to start a war, as any true politician always does! So he employs his evil henchman, Count Rugen to come up with a nefarious scheme.
Count Rugen, a man blessed (or cursed) with an extra digit upon his hands (six fingered men now has an explanation), comes up with a brilliant (ha), evil and dastardly scheme to have the soon to be Princess Buttercup kidnapped and a neighbouring nation blamed for it. Scandalous! Never trust anyone with a title, they're all evil, underhanded bastards!
Little note here; I'm not precisely sure that The Six Fingered Man hatched the Buttercup kidnapping plot, but for the purposes of this blog he did, so nit picking from the informed please.
Count Rugen hires a crack (snorts) team of mercenaries to abduct and flee with the poor, young lady. I bet she was thrilled actually. I mean if your future involved spending the rest of your life with someone who has less personality than a store mannequin wouldn't you want a change of scenery pretty quickly? Thought so! So late one night the future Princess Buttercup is stolen away from her comfortable and boring existence.
The professional kidnapping mercenaries flee across the sea with their prize, guided by their leader, the brilliant, scheming Sicilian, Vizzini. For them to be led by anyone else would be inconceivable.....
Ah Vizzini, a man who's intellect is so vast he can call Aristotle, Plato and Socrates morons and utterly believe his own words. Would anyone ever willingly challenge him? After all it's well known that you never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
The man is actually an idiot!
Without his giant, musclebound henchman Fezzik to watch his back, Vizzini would be nothing more than an annoying mouth.
Loyal, brave, strong and utterly dumb Fezzik. I guess every mercenary gang in history needed a big brute to do all the donkey work for them, you know; throwing boulders, crushing heads and moving small countries, that kind of grunt work. Step up Fezzik, you may not be much in the brains department, but you don't need to be, you have a sneaky, bald Sicilian to do your thinking for you. You poor bastard you!
Despite their brains and brawn, neither Fezzik nor Vizzini would be able to pull off a daring kidnapping without the blade of a master swordsman to protect them. In a medieval fairytale land the sword is boss and everyone pays attention to it. To be sure of success in a daring raid you need to have a better swordsman than your adversaries do, you need a man so driven by vengeance that he wills himself to be the best! Here he is.
Meet Inigo Montoya, swordsman extraorinaire, driven by extreme vengeance to kill people with more than the required number of fingers on their hands. Well when you're seeking vengeance for something, having such a distinguishable feature does tend to narrow down the number of people you have to skewer!
Mr Montoya is searching for a man with six fingers, believed to be culpable in the murder of his father. Have you seen any six fingered men yet? He intends to recite him something (I'm guessing it ain't poetry), before entering a sharp bit of metal in to his body. Nice!
So there we have it, a princess to be has been kidnapped, the kidnappers have been revealed and for some reason they're being pursued across the sea by the totally non-scarily named Dread Pirate Roberts. Why has he even got involved? Maybe he just wants a wench he can put across his knee and spank every so often, hmm...
What follows on is the main meat of the film, which I shall not reveal to you, save to say there will be death, duels, swamps full of fire, dangerous rodents of a quite unusual size, witty one liners, sneakiness, more death, some part death and the oh so joyous revenge! As well as pure badassery like in the only clip I shall show you:
Be amazed at the awesomeness there!
So there you have a brief, totally non-review like look at The Princess Bride. I implore you to watch it, to enjoy it and to quote the hell out of it like lots of us knowledgeable folk do online!
Have fun storming the castle!
To the pain!
Goodbye!
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