Princess Bride (1987)

Variety
"...At heart, PRINCESS BRIDE celebrates the power of true love to triumph over adversity..." 09/16/1987

Entertainment Weekly
"...THE PRINCESS BRIDE is a fun, sad, scary, witty fairy tale featuring the greatest performance ever given by a professional wrestler, the late Andre the Giant..." 09/14/2001 p.71

Sight and Sound
"Reiner's beautifully crafted fairytale pastiche still represents one of the high points of US comedy in the 1980s..." 02/01/2001 p.64

Total Film
"...Rob Reiner's uncategorisable blend of action, romance, spoof, swashbuckler and fairytale is purely and simply a corking movie..." 05/01/2000 p.118

Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "It was influential...the current crop of fractured fairy tales clearly owe a great debt to its groundbreaking balancing act of melodramatic pastiche, light-hearted send-up and the simple delights of a good yarn well told." 11/01/2008 p.146-147

Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "More swashbuckling than Errol Flynn, more romantic than Casablanca, funnier than virtually everything, THE PRINCESS BRIDE is -- like MARY POPPINS -- practically perfect in every way." 12/01/2008 p.211

ReelViews 10 of 10
"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die"...When William Goldman wrote those words, he did not intend for them to become a fragment of '80s pop culture. When Mandy Patinkin spoke those words, he didn't expect his every inflection to be endlessly mimicked. And when Rob Reiner directed those words, he had no idea that kids and young adults everywhere would be repeating them. Nevertheless, there's no doubting that nearly every movie-going American is familiar with those three short sentences. Reiner has stated that, along with "I'll have what she's having" and "You can't handle the truth," this represents one of the three most often quoted excerpts of dialogue from his movies...For director Rob Reiner, The Princess Bride represented the fourth of seven consecutive commercial and critical successes...The tone owes more to Spinal Tap than to any of Reiner's other outings -- it is witty and irreverent without ever going so far over-the-top that it turns the proceedings into camp. Reiner manages the difficult yet ultimately rewarding task of creating a movie that simultaneously parodies a genre while also celebrating and participating in it...Since its release more than 15 years ago, The Princess Bride has often been copied, but never equaled. Perhaps the most successful movie to capture its essential spirit was the animated Shrek. The word "brilliant" is often overused in the movie business, but this is one of those occasions when it is warranted. The Princess Bride is an unparalleled achievement -- a modern classic that will be enjoyed for generations to come. It has been called the "Generation X's version of The Wizard of Oz," and, more than any other description, that comes the closest to identifying this movie's impact. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"The Princess Bride" begins as a story that a grandfather is reading out of a book. But already the movie has a spin on it, because the grandfather is played by Peter Falk, and in the distinctive quality of his voice we detect a certain edge. His voice seems to contain a measure of cynicism about fairy stories, a certain awareness that there are a lot more things on heaven and Earth than have been dreamed of by the Brothers Grimm...The story he tells is about Buttercup, a beautiful princess (Robin Wright) who scornfully orders around a farm boy (Cary Elwes) until the day when she realizes, thunderstruck, that she loves him. She wants to live happily ever after with him, but then evil forces intervene, and she is kidnapped and taken far away across the lost lands, while he is killed..."Is this story going to have a lot of kissing in it?" Falk's grandson asks. Well, it's definitely going to have a lot of Screaming Eels...Part of the secret is that Reiner never stays with the same laugh very long. There are a lot of people for his characters to meet as they make their long journey, and most of them are completely off the wall...There is, for example, a band of three brigands led by Wallace Shawn as a scheming little conniver and including Andre the Giant as Fezzik the Giant, a crusher who may not necessarily have a heart of gold. It is Shawn who tosses the princess to the Screaming Eels, with great relish..."The Princess Bride" was adapted by William Goldman from his own novel, which he says was inspired by a book he read as a child, but which seems to have been cheerfully transformed by his wicked adult imagination. It is filled with good-hearted fun, with performances by actors who seem to be smacking their lips and by a certain true innocence that survives all of Reiner's satire. And, also, it does have kissing in it. - Roger Ebert