Rida’s review published on Letterboxd:
I started watching The Princess Bride under the impression that I would fall in love with it. A medieval setting, good-looking actors, and a great reputation: what could go wrong?
The Princess Bride is, I suppose, a slightly tongue-in-cheek fairytale, and it is admittedly pretty funny. The supporting characters, Inigo Montoya and the giant Fazznik, are absolutely wonderful, and there is one excellent swordfight that almost makes up for all the complaints I’m about to make. But... it’s just a run-of-the-mill fairytale, something I would have loved if I was, like, twelve. There’s nothing subversive about it, nothing that I expected, or hoped for – the princess bride running off to save her man, perhaps, or, you know, bashing an enormous rodent over the head as he’s attacking her lover, instead of shrieking and waiting for Westley to kill the damn thing himself.
Princess Buttercup is painfully passive, and Westley has the blank eyes of a terrible actor. They look beautiful, but I felt more depth of emotion in Inigo’s respect for Westley’s sword-fighting skills than I did in their supposed true love. They were both good during the farm boy section at the beginning – there was real tension, real sparks – but by the time Westley takes off his mask (and manages to look quite dashing despite sporting a dinky little mustache) everything just fizzles out.
The film itself is fairly entertaining, but at every turn I expected it to finally morph into the classic it has always been touted as. The frightening speech from Westley at the very end is promisingly dark, but then it turns out that the hero is nothing more than a noble knight in shining armor, and the villain is just a cackling, asexual sociopath, and the heroine has gotten her reward because she sat around waiting for Westley to rescue her instead of doing something herself. It’s all surface and too little depth. Or have I missed the point entirely?
I’m trying to read The Princess Bride as a satire, but that doesn’t quite work out, because if the storyteller-grandpa framing device is any indication, we’re supposed to gradually lose our modern skepticism and become fully involved in the earnest nature of the traditional fairytale. I did have fun watching The Princess Bride, but by the time it was over, I felt somewhat let down.
I wish I had gotten the chance to watch this at a younger age. I’d have fallen head over heels in love with it, daydreamed about this lovely fantasy world, watched it over and over a million times. I guess I’m much too cynical now to enjoy it the way I should. True, eternal love? It can be found, perhaps, but probably only in fairytales. And I don’t particularly enjoy those anymore.