#Princess buttercup movie#
It’s a movie of clever banter but little visual wit (beyond the nimble early fencing scenes between Elwes and Mandy Patinkin), and some lumpy lines and performances that appeal to children as they are seen in the condescending eyes of adults. “The Princess Bride” could do with revisions in other ways. Her only recourse in the face of her impending forced marriage to Humperdinck is to plan her suicide-an act from which she is again saved by Westley, who protests, “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.” It’s worth recalling, too, the severe test to which Westley, disguised by the mask of the Dread Pirate Roberts, subjects her: it involves his bitter and derisive skepticism about the truth-the fidelity-of her love, and culminates in his raising his hand as if to hit her and declaring, “Where I come from, there are penalties when a woman lies.” The one time she raises a hand to her oppressors, she’s utterly incompetent and has to be rescued by Westley, as she is at every turn-protected from flames in the “fire swamp,” pulled from a pit of “lightning sand,” protected from the ROUSes (rodents of unusual size). To begin with, its title character-the princess Buttercup (Robin Wright), who wants to marry a commoner named Westley (Elwes) but is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon)-is written and directed, for the most part, like a sack of gold rather than a sentient person. Much about it is rooted in the dated standards of its times and, thus, is ripe for reimagination. In the case of “The Princess Bride,” which is based on William Goldman’s adaptation of his own novel, I’d say that the door is wide open-not least because it’s far from a perfect movie. That’s why I’d like to make a modest proposal to the film industry in response to the “Princess Bride” outcry: namely, remake everything, or, at least, anything, and see whether a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a producer, and a group of actors have the insight and the imagination to meet the challenges and the inspirations of the classics. They are wrong, of course, but their critical delusions don’t prevent anyone from enjoying the originals. There are people who think that Jim McBride’s 1983 remake of “Breathless” is better than the original some viewers find Brian De Palma’s 1983 “Scarface” superior to Howard Hawks’s 1932 version. It seems self-evident that no film is literally damaged by a remake-and that if any damage results it’s of a psychological, not a cinematic, nature. Among the most over-the-top of the fretters, for instance, was the movie’s co-star Cary Elwes, who tweeted this riff on one of the movie’s famous lines: “There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. Judging by the outcry from Hollywood stars over a Sony executive’s vaguely floated notion this week of remaking “The Princess Bride,” you’d think that the idea wasn’t to make a new film but to alter or destroy Rob Reiner’s 1987 original.
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