In the latest issue of SFX (that I’ve got my hands on, at any rate), Neil Gaiman said something along the lines of, “Stardust will fall into that same genre in which The Princess Bride has been hanging around in all by itself for the past 20 years.” That’s the gist of it. And seeing as I respect Gaiman immensely, and also had this movie recommended to me by one of my flatmates, I, ehem, got my hands on it and watched it.

Buttercup is a young woman growing up on a farm, apparently only helped by Westly, the farmhand. For years and years and years she torments him, making him do all kinds of menial, pointless work, and he never complains. All he ever says is “As you wish.” Naturally, this really means “I love you,” and soon, she discovers that she loves him, too. However, he is but a mere poor farmhand, and cannot afford to marry her. Therefore, he decides to travel to Gilder, the country across the sea, to try to make his fortune. Unfortunately, on the way there his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate (coincidentally, a Prestige Class in DnD) Roberts (a name and title I am sure I’ve heard somewhere else, and I don’t hold it as improbable that it has been used in a hommaging kind of way, just as I suspect Lise Myhre named her comics character Nemi Montoya after Inigo, and everyone are killed. Poor Buttercup is devastated, and becomes dead inside, so when Prince Humperdinck five years later decides she should marry him, she doesn’t care enough to resist. However, when she is kidnapped by the Sicillian Vizzini and his henchmen, the adventure begins…

Now, The Princess Bride wasn’t quite what I expected. I’d actually expected at least some kind of gritty realism, at least as much of this as you can expect to get in a movie for children. Saying that there wasn’t a certain realistic element to the atmosphere of the film would be lying, but the realism got obscured by the cheesy one-liners (most of which I loved — “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” is a clasic I doubt I’ll ever forget), the poor sets, and the rather crappy 80s “special effects” (an example of which can be the R.O.U.S.-es, as they’re actually called in the movie: the Rodents of Unusual Size — or, as they obviously were, small men in ugly rat suits).

Still, though, a truly enjoyable movie. I’ve already mentioned the awesome one-liners; in addition to these there were some astounding sword fights (most notably the one between Inigo and the Masked Pursuer), a bunch of rather fun gags (like the one involving Billy Crystal in an old-miralcleman-costume, or the battle of wits between the Mask and Vizzini, or, again, the whole sword fight between the Mask and Inigo), and a generally entertaining whole.

The kind of fun-to-watch-over-and-over-again movie which I really like, sort of like Cutthroat Island, Stardust (I suspect I’ll watch this one many a time once it’s avaliable on DVD), and those kinds of flicks. (I was about to mention Highlander, too, but then I regained my senses.)

So as not to break my long-honoured tradition of repeating myself ad nauseum, this was just fun all over. 7.5/10.

And a one-point bump-up for Stardust.

“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”