The Princess Bride: 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

My constant need to talk about movies gets me into trouble only when I’m presented with that one, absurd question: “What’s your favorite movie?”

How can I have a favorite movie? I have five hundred favorite movies and I’ve been in moods where each one of them has been my absolute, hands-down favorite. And don’t even think about ranking them – it’s meaningless, because just when you think it’s almost right, you realize you like #42 better than #9 but not better than #20, which is definitely worse than #9.

And yet I’m asked the question so much that I usually just give up and say The Princess Bride.

Because really, this is a perfect movie. It’s an epic fairy tale but also a spoof of epics and fairy tales. Its characters are all hilarious and yet you’re emotionally attached to each one. It’s exciting, action-packed, and captures the imagination. The tagline sums it up the best: “Heroes. Giants. Villains. Wizards. True love.” Really, what could possibly be better?

While I have nothing bad to say about the movie – which, if you haven’t seen it, just do so, and quickly – I’m afraid I have plenty to complain about with the DVD set itself. There’s just no content, which is baffling because they were obviously making an effort.

For example, they nabbed brand-new interviews with stars Robin Wright-Penn, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, and Christopher Guest, but the result is a fluffy featurette called “Princess Bride: The Untold Tales” that runs less than ten minutes.

Only two other featurettes are included, and neither of them is any longer. “Fairy Tales and Folklore” brings in a fairy tale expert to point out how the screenplay borrows the structure of classic fairy tales, while the most interesting of the lot is “The Art of Fencing,” which features a fencing expert taking us through the various (excellent) swordfights in the film. It may not teach you to win a duel with a six-fingered man to avenge your father’s death, but at least it holds your attentions.

And that’s it for special features, with the exception of one that I don’t even want to talk about: “True Love and High Adventure: The Official Princess Bride DVD Game.”

What it amounts to is a collection of three mini-games which are each about 30 seconds long, didn’t seem to work right, are aimed at people under negative one years old (“what rhymes with ‘me’?”), and feature voice work by people with horrible imitations of Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre the Giant. Oh, and even the name is a misnomer – it’s not really an official DVD game but actually “episode 2” of a series of crappy internet games that can be found at princessbridegame.com, at least I think. I didn’t bother to check because I was afraid I might kill myself.

On the other hand, the packaging is pretty ...