PG13- The Princess Bride (v,slight x,some b)

A screenwriter best known in the SF&F community for his classic novel The Princess Bride (and its screen adaptation), Goldman has a tendency toward humerous characters and witty lines, while at the same time using the writing style of high classic fantasy. The combination is a range of powerful scenes, from side-splitting to tearful to terrifying. Besides this fantasy book, though, Goldman has written a number of screenplays, some of them well known (like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "All the President's Men", and "Maverick"). Let's just say that his greatest talent seems to lie in his ability to make characters that are larger than life, then place them in a story that gives them a run for their money. What do we care if almost all of his works are adaptations on other people's ideas? He's too good for anything else to matter.

One of the great masterpieces of modern fantasy is The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure, the "good parts" version abridged by William Goldman. Please do not be fooled by the back cover: the story is not about when Buttercup met Prince Humperdinck and found out he was a disgustingly evil man. It's about when Buttercup met Wesley, and (slowly) found out he was a (nearly) disgustinly perfect man. Poor and perfect, and her true love. Also, please don't be fooled by the movie. The movie is wonderful, and so is the book, but they are different kinds of wonderful. In particular, the book is framed by "boring parts" that are humorously treated and promptly removed so the reader can get on with the story. This makes the tone much more light-hearted than in the movie, though the actors did their best to properly ham it up. No, for those of you who can quote the movie line for line, the script was not lifted directly from the book. Now you have two sets of quotes to memorize.

But what is the story really about? Well, everything. It's about life, if life were a high fantasy adventure with lots of four-dimensional characters hacked out of two-dimensional wood. If beautiful women who were chosen to be princesses didn't want to be, if the dead could come to life again, if giants walked the earth and kind of regreted that they couldn't fight much one on one anymore, if swordsmen practised for years in order to get their revenge, then it would be like life. In this case, perhaps life would be better off imitating art.

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Last Updated: November 6, 1999

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