The Princess Bride

Every so often an adventure film comes along that refuses to be filed away neatly, and The Princess Bride is exactly that kind of stubborn, memorable outlier. You can tell a lot about a movie from its tagline, and “It’s as real as the feelings you feel.” gives away the game in the best way.

The story kicks off from a clean, almost deceptively simple place: In this enchantingly cracked fairy tale, the beautiful Princess Buttercup and the dashing Westley must overcome staggering odds to find happiness amid six-fingered swordsmen, murderous princes, Sicilians and rodents of unusual size. But even death can’t stop these true lovebirds from triumphing. Cary Elwes takes the lead role and runs with it, while Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon make sure the margins of the story stay just as alive.

It would be easy to watch The Princess Bride purely for its surface pleasures, but there’s more going on underneath. Threads of based on novel or book and boat chase run through the film, giving the adventure elements an emotional undercurrent that keeps things from feeling weightless. You can also feel miracle and narration working in the background, quietly shaping how later scenes land even when they’re not the explicit focus.

The adventure, family, fantasy and romance classification undersells it a little. The Princess Bride uses those elements as a foundation, then builds something more particular on top — a film that’s easy to categorize and a little harder to fully predict.

Rob Reiner’s handling of tone throughout The Princess Bride deserves particular credit — it would be easy for a film juggling this many ideas to feel scattered, but the direction keeps everything pointed in the same direction. The rest of the ensemble matters too — Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest all get moments that push the story forward rather than just filling out the frame, which is more than you can say for a lot of films with casts this size.

The runtime, 99 minutes, is used efficiently — there’s very little fat on this one. Behind the scenes, The Princess Bride, Buttercup Films, Act III Productions backed the production, giving Rob Reiner the resources to fully realize the vision. Made on a budget of $16,000,000, the film went on to earn $30,900,000 worldwide — a number that speaks for itself.

Fans of Rob Reiner’s other work will recognize the fingerprints immediately, but The Princess Bride stands fine on its own even without that context. Nearly 39 years on, The Princess Bride hasn’t lost much of its charge — if anything, it plays better with a little distance. It’s a detail easy to miss on a first viewing of The Princess Bride, but it rewards anyone paying close attention. That kind of craftsmanship is easy to take for granted until you watch a lesser film try the same thing and fail. Little touches like that are why the film keeps finding new defenders long after its initial release. It’s the sort of small decision that separates a good adventure film from a merely competent one. None of it feels accidental — The Princess Bride is the product of choices made with real intention, and it plays that way from start to finish.