The Way of the Game

The Way of the Game


We Just Watched a Movie – The Princess Bride

November 30, 2014

The Princess Bride this week.  Camille next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you'd rank the movies in the comments below.  You'll also find our ranked lists on iCheckMovies: Jonathan's, Michael's, and Nathaniel's.

The Princess Bride – September 25, 1987

Director: Rob Reiner
Producer: Rob Reiner, Andrew Scheinman
Writers: William Goldman
Actors: Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Fred Savage
Studio: ACT III Communications
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The course of the conversation:
We're talking about Father Beast's #1 movie. If he's still listening, hopefully he doesn't hate us afterwards.
Great storytelling even during action scenes, something many modern movies could learn from.
The story-within-a-story makes for wonderful fourth-wall breaking.
Nathaniel likes the movie "in spite of itself," which prompts Jonathan to think that phrase does not mean what Nathaniel thinks it means.
Cary Elwes may have been a bit typecast for a while thanks to The Princess Bride (see Men in Tights), but at least he's damn good at the part.
The Princess Bride: The Stage Play?  Gotta be better than Spider-Man: The Musical.
Hate for the ubiquitousness of love for the movie, not for the movie itself.
Have we lost our ability to have a nuanced opinion?
Side-track into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Voodoo, Hindu(?) mysticism, death by Jehovah, the Holy Grail is real, and aliens are where you draw the line?
The classic fairy-tale tropes, broken halfway through.
A clever set up helps you buy into the possibility of a tragic end.
The characters are the key.
Nathaniel and Jonathan find it difficult to take more than quotes from the film.
Michael believes The Princess Bride is Star Wars.
The power of quotes to bring you back to the entire movie.
Reminiscing about the good(?) old(!) days.