Review: "THE PRINCESS BRIDE" Still Storming the Castle

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 21 (of 2020) by Leroy Douresseaux

[This review originally appeared on Patreon.]

The Princess Bride (1987)

Running time: 98 minutes (1 hour, 38 minutes)

MPAA – PG

DIRECTOR:  Rob Reiner

WRITER:  William Goldman (based on the book by William Goldman)

PRODUCERS:  Rob Reiner and Andrew Scheinman

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Adrian Biddle

EDITOR:  Robert Leighton

COMPOSER:  Mark Knopfler

Academy Award nominee

FANTASY/ROMANCE/ADVENTURE/FAMILY

Starring:  Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Fred Savage, Peter Falk, Carol Kane, and Billy Crystal

The Princess Bride is a 1987 fantasy-adventure and romantic film from director Rob Reiner.  The film is based on William Goldman's 1973 novel, The Princess Bride, for which Goldman wrote the screenplay adaptation.  2017 will mark the 30th anniversary of the film's release (October 9, 1987).  In The Princess Bride the film, a grandfather tells his grandson the story of a princess sought by two men who desire her – one a mysterious hero and the other a hateful prince.

The Princess Bride opens with a framing story in which The Grandfather (Peter Falk) reads a book, “The Princess Bride,” to The Grandson (Fred Savage), who is sick and relegated to his bed.  The story then travels from the present day of the Grandson's bedroom to the past of the Renaissance Era.  The place of arrival is a country named “Florin.”  There, we meet Buttercup (Robin Wright), a beautiful young woman, and Westley (Cary Elwes), the farmhand she loves to order around.  The truth is that Buttercup loves Westley, but one day, Westley leaves the farm to seek his fortune.

Later, Buttercup learns that Westley was on ship that was attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts and is assumed dead.  The story moves ahead five years, and Buttercup has reluctantly agreed to marry Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), Prince of Florin.  There are, however, conspiracies and conspirators afoot who stand in the way of that marriage.  This includes a Sicilian crime boss named Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), a giant named Fezzik (André the Giant), a Spanish master swordsman named Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), and a mysterious man in black.

Recently, IDW Publishing sent me a copy-for-review of their adult coloring book based on The Prince Bride, entitled The Princess Bride: A Storybook to Color.  I decided that I finally needed to sit down and watch The Princes Bride, start to finish, in its entirety, which I had never done.  Why had I not done that before?  I don't know.  I have always been curious about the movie, and I even owned a copy of William Goldman's novel a long time ago (which I lost before I could read it).

I can describe The Princess Bride as a multi-genre movie.  It is part medieval fantasy, part storybook romance, and part swashbuckling adventure (quietly and gently adventurous).  And the result is a damn fine movie.  I don't know what makes it work, but I think director Rob Reiner has a lot to do with that.  His directorial pace and mood suggests that he wanted this movie to be a storybook tale that found comedy in the elements of fairy tales and fantasy, but without mocking and parodying them.  Also, I think William Goldman's screenplay builds the characters using quirks and eccentricities so that he can poke fun at the players rather than at the genres that are their field of play.

The resulting film is an utterly delightful and a truly unique cinematic gem.  I don't think Reiner could get The Princess Bride made today, not without pumping it full of intense action and making extensive use of computer-generated imagery (CGI).  If made today, even the film's photography would be heavily altered and enhanced through the use of software.

The Princess Bride is essentially a “hand-made” movie, and somehow the talent involved in this film made magic.  I bet they did not realize that until they saw the finished film.  If you have not yet seen The Princess Bride, it is time for you to realize the magic, too.

9 of 10
A+

Sunday, January 22, 2017

NOTES:
1988 Academy Awards, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Music, Original Song” (Willy DeVille for the song "Storybook Love")

The text is copyright © 2017 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: THE PRINCESS BRIDE: A Storybook to Color

THE PRINCESS BRIDE: A STORYBOOK TO COLOR
IDW PUBLISHING – @IDWPublishing

ARTIST: Rachel Curtis
ISBN: 978-1631407734; paperback (November 2016)
80pp, B&W, $16.99 U.S., $21.99 CAN

The Princess Bride is a 1987 fantasy and romantic film from director Rob Reiner.  William Goldman wrote the film's screenplay, basing it upon his 1973 fantasy novel, also entitled The Princess Bride.

The film uses as its framing sequence a grandfather reading a book, entitled “The Princess Bride,” to his ailing grandson.  The book's story concerns a beautiful farmgirl, Buttercup, and the love of her life, the farmhand-turned-pirate, Wesley, and their struggle against the arrogant Prince Humperdinck of Florin who is determined that Buttercup marry him.

The film will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2017; it was originally released to U.S. theaters in October 1987.  Oscar-nominated, The Princess Bride has a loyal following that seems to continue to grow, and among movie fans, it is one of the most beloved American films of all time.

Adult coloring books have been all the rage the last few years.  Of course, it is conceivable that The Princess Bride would be perfect for adaptation into a coloring book, adult or otherwise.  It should only be done, however, if it can be done right.  An artist and her publisher, in fact, did it right.

IDW Publishing presents The Princess Bride: A Storybook to Color, a new adult coloring book with illustrations black and white illustrations created by Rachel Curtis.  Curtis provides more than 70 illustrations based on The Princess Bride for you, dear reader, to color as you wish.  These illustrations are printed on high quality paper that won't let colors bleed through.

I love The Princess Bride, and so does Rachel Curtis.  She turns practically every key moment in the film into double-page illustrated spreads for readers to color.  There are even pages that take as a theme objects that are key to the film, including swords, ropes, items of clothing, eyeglasses, implements, and crowns, to name a few.

The spreads that I like the most include recreations of some of my favorite scenes in The Princess Bride.  Curtis offers a stylish take on the scene in which Buttercup faces giant eels that menace her as she tries to swim to safety; it looks like a stain glass illustration.  Curtis perfectly captures the poison-wine duel sequence between Wesley and Vizzini, the Sicilian crime boss who holds a knife on Buttercup.  I can't resist the two-page spread of decorative R.O.U.S. (rats of unusual size), and her wide screen interpretation of Count Rugen's torture experimentation chamber is impressive.

I love Curtis' take on the sequence of the heroes riding off into forever after their victory at Humperdinck's castle.  If you want to draw your own version of that scene or any other, Curtis crafted a few pages with decorative borders and space for you to illustrate.  Rachel Curtis' detailed, decorative, and emotive illustrations are a love letter to both The Princess Bride and to its fans.  That makes The Princess Bride: A Storybook to Color a superb gift for The Princess Bride fan.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2016 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Lawrence Kasdan's Stephen King's Dreamcatcher

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 40 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Dreamcatcher (2003)
Running time: 136 minutes (2 hours, 16 minutes)
MPAA - R for violence, gore and language
DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
WRITERS: William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan (based upon the novel by Stephen King)
PRODUCERS: Lawrence Kasdan and Charles Okun
CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Seale (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Raul Davalos and Carol Littleton
COMPOSER: James Newton Howard

HORRO/SCI-FI with elements of a thriller

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Sizemore, Donnie Wahlberg, Mikey Holekamp, Reece Thompson, Giacomo Baessato, Joel Palmer, and Andrew Robb

I understand that in adapting novels to screen, elements including plot, events and character, might have to be removed for various reasons including being able to adapt the novel into a two hour movie. I also understand that sometimes filmmakers make changes for the sake of making changes; some even believe they can even improve the novel’s story by making changes.

That said, I continue to fail to understand why Stephen King allows his novels to be turned into films. The heart of a King novel are the characters, especially the relationship between characters. The supernatural element, usually something horrific, is part of the characters’ environment, but how the characters deal with the supernatural allows us to see into them and usually depth of characterization is more interesting than the supernatural horror. As frightening as the horror was in a novel like Pet Sematery, the really scary crap, the true intensity in that story, was the interpersonal and familial relationships. Getting to see what was behind the closed doors and inside people’s head was a heck of a lot more frightening than the angry dead. The film adaptation of that novel, which was enough of a minor hit to call for a sequel, completely missed that point.

So while watching Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher, I pretty much figured that while Kasdan and co-adaptor screenwriter William Goldman may have got the point of King’s Dreamcatcher, they did what most everyone who has adapted King to film have done: drop some characters and character points and favor the boogey men. I haven’t yet read Dreamcatcher, but I assume that the relationship between the four lead characters in the book is something spectacular. The movie only hints at the depth of their relationship; indeed, the viewer has to assume that these men are close.

Dr. Henry Devlin (Thomas Jane), Joe “Beaver” Clarendon (Jason Lee), Gary “Jonesy” Jones (Damian Lewis), and Pete Moore (Tom Olyphant) are four troubled friends who reunite for a camping trip. They’re all still affected by their relationship with Douglas Clavell (Donnie Wahlberg), a strange, seemingly handicapped child they saved 20 years earlier. That boy, whom they named Duddits, weighs heavily on their minds during their trip. Strange things begin to happen when the friends, in separate pairs, encounter lost hunters in the snow bound Maine woods. As a vicious snow storm sets in, a strange and unknown menace stalks the forest. Meanwhile, a military force led by a dangerous commander (Morgan Freeman) has closed off the area because of an alleged contagion, and the friend’s only hope may be an independent thinking soldier (Tom Sizemore).

Dreamcatcher summons up the ghosts of others “King” films and television movies, including Stand by Me and It. Most of all, Dreamcatcher the movie is a re-imagining and de facto remake of John Carpenter’s superb (and almost lost) film The Thing, but Dreamcatcher lacks Carpenter’s film’s intensity and eye popping gore. The first half hour of set up does intrigue, creating anticipation and whetting the appetite for hot supernatural action. It is somewhat stunted and clumsy in that you can pretty much figure out that the film is trying to tell us a lot, but doesn’t have the time to tell us in detail, so all we’re left with is vagueness.

When the crap does hit the fan – the scary stuff starts to happen, Dreamcatcher delivers the chills and thrills quite well. I was literally on the edge of my seat, and I was certain I could feel my heart racing and stopping with each new bump and chill. The film gives a good scare for quite a while, but as the film heads towards the homestretch, the sci-fi element unravels just enough to hamstring the film.

Because the acting is good and some of my favorite actors are in the film made watching Dreamcatcher fairly pleasant. Thomas (Deep Blue Sea and The Sweetest Thing) is a star in the making. I don’t think that he has the action movie chops of say Bruce Willis. I think his forte will probably be to play the leading man in comedies and dramas, but whenever he’s on the screen, I think the viewer naturally gravitates towards his character. Tom Sizemore continues to be the solid supporting guy, and Freeman, one of the best American actors of the last fifteen years, can play a really cool nasty guy. And when you see Donnie Wahlberg’s name in the credits, you still won’t believe it’s him.

Dreamcatcher is by no means a great thriller. However, sometimes it’s very good, and for a long time, it delivers some fairly effective chills, and that is good enough. The characters are engaging, and the creatures, except for a few moments of looking ridiculous, are pretty scary and threatening. Yeah, I think Carpenter’s aforementioned The Thing is a better and more satisfying version of this story, but Dreamcatcher, imperfect as it is, has enough good moments to make it a fairly decent thriller, worth watching if you like the scary stuff.

6 of 10
B