Movie 2: Princess Bride

[xela]

This has to be at least the fifth time I"ve watched Princess Bride, a movie I find simply delightful. A satire of Medieval fantasy that is itself a great medieval fantasy; a movie that is fun for children of all ages. I recommend it wholeheartedly. And if by some miracle you are one of those people who has never seen it, for heaven's sake don't read my second paragraph.

What I do not recommend is thinking about it very hard. As I've thought about writing this entry over the past couple of days, I found my feelings increasingly mixed. Should it be praised for breaking the genre's female stereotype when Buttercup picks up a stick and whacks the rodent of unusual size? Or condemned for promulgating that stereotype when she turns out to be so damned useless with that stick? If you squint a certain way, it is fundamentally the story of how a gang of small-time crooks beat a gang of big-time crooks: what kind of ethical message is that? I could go on, but I'll spare you. In the end, I decided to just let the damned movie be fun, and not pick at it.

Comments

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

The movie's great. The book is even better....

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

Oh, and what you have to realize about it (and it's way clearer from the book than from the movie) is that it's a total satire and all the things that you find "objectionable" about it are there deliberately to make fun of the stereotypes in our storytelling.

The introduction to the book, for example, is all about how the author's "family" (I think it's fabricated, but I'm not sure) and it's pretty "offensive."