The Princess Bride-Special Edition
Unfolded as an old-fashioned frame story, The Princess Bride is not without cheesy elements -...
Unfolded as an old-fashioned frame story, The Princess Bride is not without cheesy elements - too-long sword fights, unfortunate tonal transitions and occasionally clunky dialogue - but it well and truly rises above its station through a rigorous self awareness: it knows that profundity can often reveal itself through silliness and overt sentimentality, and is fully capable of walking that line. Director Rob Reiner and supporting actor Christopher Guest bring some measure of Spinal Tap's joke-a-minute lifeblood to proceedings, as do Billy Crystal, Peter Falk, Andre The Giant and an extremely young Fred Savage, while at the centre of the film sits the gorgeous Robin Wright Penn and the tremendously overacting Cary Elwes, the subjects of a rather exquisite love story.
This DVD package is marketed as "deluxe", but is rather lacking compared to the other sentimental Sony releases this issue (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth); while those films boast never before seen documentaries, The Princess Bride manages to just scrape up a seven-year-old retrospective film which, while excellent, comprehensive (30 minutes) and informative, hardly carries the same cache that it might if it were new. However, with a pair of commentaries (one from director Reiner, another from writer William Goldman), and a handful of secondary features (Elwes on set, original EPK-style making of's, etc), the package has much to offer.
