The Princess Bride

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Well, it has finally come to the last in our series of Fantasy movies, and what a way to finish! This time around, Derek and Larry watched Rob Reiner's classic The Princess Bride, an incredible cast, including Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Fred Savage, Robin Wright, Peter Falk, Carol Kane, and Billy Crystal.

A sick boy (Savage) receives a visit from his grandfather (Falk), who tries to entertain the boy with a story about Princess Buttercup (Wright) who falls in love with a stable boy named Westley (Elwes) wo, whenever she asks him to do something, responds only with "as you wish."

Westley would later go on to become a tornado chaser in the Midwestern U.S.

Westley leaves to find his fortune (as one does when one wishes to marry a princess, we assume), but is thought to be dead when his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts.

A few years later, Buttercup agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck (Sarandon), because she presumably does not want to die a spinster at the ripe old age of about twenty-ish, as people tended to do back in medieval times. However, before she can give up on life and marry the prince, she is kidnapped by three bandits named Vizzini (Shawn), Fezzik (Andre the Giant), and Inigo Montoya (Patinkin). Inigo and Fezzik do not seem to care for Vizzini, but they help him anyway because he might be able Inigo find the six-fingered man who murdered his father.

The bandits, shown here in a Tarantino-esque shot before Tarantino was a thing.

While escaping with Buttercup, the three find they are being followed by what appears to be the ship of the Dread Pirate Roberts. They stop at a high cliff face and Fezzik carries all three of them to the top, where they make a plan (except for Buttercup, who really seems disinterested in helping them for some reason) involving using Inigo as a primary defense, Fezzik as a secondary, and Vizzini as the guy who runs away with his kidnapping victim in tow.

Inigo waits on top of the cliff for Roberts to climb up so he can be killed. When it doesn't look like Roberts will make it, Inigo offers to throw down a rope to speed things up. After a bit of arguing about whether or not Inigo can be trusted, Roberts finally agrees, climbs up the rope, and the two talk while Roberts catches his breath. (Inigo is really a pretty friendly and helpful bandit.) Inigo even tells Roberts about the six-fingered man who killed his father. Then they fight with swords, and Roberts eventually wins and escapes, leaving an unconscious Inigo behind.

Next, he catches up to Fezzik, who basically throws Roberts around a bit and smashes him against a rock until Roberts chokes him out. He goes down hard.

When he catches up to Vizzini, he challenges him to a duel of the brains. Roberts takes two cups of wine, does some stuff behind his back, and tells Vizzini to choose, warning him that one has poison in it. Vizzini, believing himself a superior intellectual, goes on a long and unnecessary rant explaining why he believes he is smarter than Roberts, and then chooses a cup, which he drinks, and then immediately dies.

Genius has far less practical application in the real world
than you might think.

Roberts takes Buttercup and tries to leave, but she is having no part of it. When he tries to force her, she pushes him down a tall hill so she can get away. As he falls, he yells, "as you wish," about the only thing Westley said to her before they fell in love, and Buttercup realizes she made a mistake. So she throws herself down the same hill.

The two, now reunited, make their way through the Fire Swamp, where Westley tells her how he had been captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts, only to learn that there had been several Dread Pirate Robertses and, when this one was ready to move on, he gave the name to Westley, who used his resources to track down Buttercup.

Aside from one minor attack by a giant rat, things go swimmingly through the Fire Swamp, only to end up with the two of them being caught at the end of it by Humperdinck and Count Rugen (Guest), Humperdinck's vizier who also happens to have six fingers on one hand.

Buttercup agrees to go with Humperdinck and marry him, provided he doesn't harm Westley. Humperdinck agrees, but then he secretly tells Rugen to take Westley prisoner and torture him.

Dicks.

When Buttercup complains that she is not happy and intends to kill herself if Humperdinck forces her to marry him, he agrees to search for Westley, although he really plans to killer her and make it look like a neighboring country did it in order to start a war. When Buttercup discovers Humperdinck never tried to find Westley, she starts mocking him, and he kills Westley

 Later, when Humperdinck orders all the thieves in the forest arrested, Inigo and Fezzik meet back up, and Fezzik tells Inigo about Rugen. They decide that the only way to get into the castle and kill Rugen is to get Westley to help them. They hear Westley's screams and follow them to where he is being kept, but it is already too late. Westley is dead.

Inigo, not one to let something like a little bit of death get in the way of his vengeance, has Fezzik carry Westley's body to the hut of Miracle Max (Crystal) and his wife (Kane), who determine that Westley is only mostly dead, and they might be able to fix that.

No, you put the lime in the coconut. Not the other way around, idiot.

But can they? Can they bring Westley back from (just) beyond the grave to save the princess? Will Inigo put Rugen, who most assuredly has difficulty finding comfortable gloves, out of his misery? Or will Fezzik get tired of the whole thing and just eat them all? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek picked this one, and with good reason. Rob Reiner is great at movies like this, and it shows he loves the material he is working with. The cast is phenomenal, the story is fun, and the whole thing is beautifully shot. Wallace Shawn's character was really obnoxious, though.

Larry has nothing bad to say about this film (except, like Derek, the Vizzini character's over-the-top personality), and he would watch it again without hesitation. He says he liked it so much that he had a hard time making jokes!

So buff up that tiara, put on your pirate mask, fire up your Princess Bride DVD, and listen to this week's commentary!