I was probably about six years old when my sisters talked me into watching The Princess Bride for the first time. We were in the kid’s movie section of the library and were debating over what we should rent to watch. The sun was glaring in on us from the windows high above my head, and my sisters were looking down at me with eyes that stated that what we were talking about was very important. I wanted to rent a movie I’d watched a hundred times before and Samantha and Reihonna were simply not having it. They pulled out a movie that had a blonde girl’s head wearing a crown. The words The Princess Bride were written in fancy lettering next to her face. A castle could be seen in the distance, with clouds surrounding it. While a boy and girl were both holding a sword looking tired, which, to me, seemed utterly pointless. I didn’t like the cover. I was a judgmental six-year-old who didn’t like anything that looked cheap, and this looked absolutely cheap in the same way that the first Harry Potter film poster had. Even to six-year-old me I could tell this was a badly edited cover reminiscent of the covers of my mother’s romance novels. The only difference was that I wanted to read my mother’s romance novels – despite the fact that she wouldn’t let me – whereas I did not want to watch this movie. It looked dumb. I was sick of the idea of princesses – a phase that only lasted a week at a time. I was sick of everything besides the one movie I wanted to watch (that one movie being the cartoon version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf). At least that movie had cool music in it. To me, it was awesome. To my sisters, the movie was stupid, boring, and repetitive. Looking back now, I can hardly blame them. There were many times I’ve obsessed over watching certain films repeatedly, and I can only imagine how awful that must have been for my siblings. My sisters would just look at me and glare as the movie played, because our parents told them to concede to the small child. I was very good at being very annoying. It must have been the most frustrating thing in the world for them.
So, my sisters tricked me. They told me we had seen The Princess Bride before. Granted, we probably had. But I was only six; my memory wasn’t at its best yet. I only focused on things that mattered to me, and Westley and Buttercup didn’t matter to me yet. I asked my sisters, Samantha and Reihonna, if this was the movie that had the girl who ate golden cherries and stepped into a mirror to get into another, more magical, world. They said yes. They lied. It was mean, but it worked. Our mother said that we all had to agree on the movie, and they figured out a way to get me to say yes.
Lucky for me, though, the lie worked and we brought The Princess Bride home.
It wasn’t immediately my favorite film. Parts of it were scary, especially to such a young child. I was unfocused through much of the movie, playing with dolls instead of paying attention to the plot. It wasn’t until I was older that I truly began to appreciate the film.
Years later, I was about twelve and my father was taking me to a smaller theater that showed older films. That night, they were playing The Princess Bride. A week or two back, we had watched The Goonies, it was amazing to see a movie – even one I’d never appreciated, such as The Goonies – on the big screen. The affect was the same with The Princess Bride. I got to see Buttercup and Westley like I never had before. Better yet, I got to share it with my dad. It was just the two of us in the theater and it was awesome. I remember grabbing his arm when the old hag of Buttercup’s dream started calling her “garbage.” It was a scary moment; she was ugly and the main focus of the screen. I was terrified, but I loved already knowing that Buttercup was dreaming, and I loved knowing that I got to share that nightmare with my favorite character.
My favorite part of the film, though, was that I got to share it with my dad. It wasn’t that a movie was somehow better when I was sitting next to my father. In fact, sometimes I enjoyed a movie less because I was seeing it through his eyes, and with his opinions. If he didn’t like certain parts of the movie, I could feel it and then I would maybe not like it as much as I had the first time I had seen that scene. Still, that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all, because I got to share the movie with my dad. My mother was always my best friend. We went shopping together, she listened to every problem I had, no matter how small. We had spa days. She once woke me up at five in the morning to watch the sunrise because I asked her to. My mother was my best friend. She still is. But my dad? My dad was this guy who seemed like an absolute giant. If I did something bad, I begged my mom not to mention it to my father. I didn’t want him to know how bad I was capable of being because I wanted him to think I was perfect. My sisters used to tell me I needed to stop treating his words like the word of god, but to me there wasn’t much of a difference. My mother was my friend, but my dad was my hero.
So, when I watched The Princess Bride with my mom and sisters, I was just watching it with my friends. Yes, I enjoyed it, but that didn’t mean much. I didn’t feel an overall connection with them about how wonderful Westley seemed to be. But when I watched The Princess Bride with my dad, I got to spend time with my hero and see a movie he enjoyed. It was the coolest part of seeing any movie in theaters.
My aunt gave me her old copy of the book over Thanksgiving one year. It was a tough read, but I was swallowed into the world of Florin, even when the editor of this “shortened version” of the book started telling us about all of his memories in the book. Sometimes his words bored me, but other times I was so intensely entertained I couldn’t bring myself to stop reading despite the fact that his narration and interruption seemed dumb to a sixth grader. He was purposefully describing shortened versions of super boring scenes the author had written. I was thankful that he shortened them, but irritated that he felt the need to tell us where he was when he had first read these scenes. It was unnecessary.
Years of research later, I found out that this was a small joke made by the author. There was no longer version of The Princess Bride. William Goldman was the only author of the book; he just thought it would be neat to make the entire thing seem longer. To make the entire thing seem like something that had actually happened.
Looking back at this, as someone who has now read the book about five times, I would agree that this decision made me love the book even more. It was like an inside joke between select readers and the author that makes everything even more interesting.
Now, as someone who has read the book, I have certain problems with the film.
Robin Wright was not the most beautiful woman in the world when she played the title role. Now, she is a contender, but at the age of twenty-one, she wasn’t even close.
I loved Westley, but we missed so many scenes of his that could have been helpful to believing their love was even more real than the movie made it seem.
Fezzik did not get to show off his fear or childishness. Instead, we only saw the most necessary emotional aspects of his character. Now, I can’t bring myself to care. I love this movie. I love that even though there are not scenes from the books that might explain events better, there are exact lines from the books in the movie that may not necessarily go to the right character, but are still said.
The film is genius. The interruption of the sick boy and his grandfather makes me laugh, brings me to tears, makes me nostalgic, and works in the same way the book had. There needed to be split parts to better explain what was happening in the books. It worked. It made me happy.
For me, The Princess Bride is my go to movie. If I need to feel like a kid again, I get to see Fezzik and Inigo rhyme together like they’re on the playground rather than in perilous positions in their lives. If I am feeling hopelessly romantic, I put on the film and listen to Westley tell Buttercup that “Death cannot stop true love, all it can do is delay is for a while.” His words make me melt every time I hear them, despite the fact that I always know they are coming. If I need a laugh, I sadistically watch Vizzini die laughing when he was convinced that he had beaten The Dread Pirate Roberts at his own game. I know that the moment is violent, and I know that the comedy is a little too he-laughed-so-now-I’m-laughing in the way it comes off. Still, I can never seem to stop myself. I laugh at his death in the same way that I laugh when Fezzik rams Westley into large boulders. There is something so innocently hilarious about the comedy of the movie that I can never stop myself. I cry at the grandfather telling the grandson “as you wish” at the end, because I am a sap and my zodiac sign is Cancer, which means that I am overly emotional. The Princess Bride forces out every emotion I think a person can possibly possess, and no matter how many times I watch it, I still feel glad that I decided to watch it again.
When people ask me what my favorite film is, I always answer The Princess Bride. If I say that the Harry Potter films are my favorites, people try to make me choose which one I think to be the best. When I say that The Princess Bride is my favorite film, on the other hand, people nod respectfully. The movie is not just something for sentimental adults and children, it’s a movie made for every person out there to enjoy. There are princesses, pirates, giants, thieves, sneaks, and an overall tone of familial love that most movies can never achieve. The Princess Bride will always be my favorite film because when I watch it, I never have to choose what genre I want to watch for the night, I get to watch all of them at once. And that, to me, is magical.
Jac Frost Is A Girl 