Movie Review: The Princess Bride (1987)

A fantasy romance comedy, The Princes Bride rides a wave of seductive cheekiness and delivers for both adults and their kids.

Grandpa (Peter Falk) visits his sick grandson (Fred Savage) and reads to him The Princess Bride. The story is set in medieval times, in a land ruled over by the evil Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) and his brutal head henchman Count Tyrone Rugen (Christopher Guest). Buttercup (Robin Wright) is a beautiful young woman who loves to ride her horse. She falls deeply in love with her farm boy Westley (Cary Elwes), but they are separated when he goes off to find his fortune. Word arrives that Westley has been captured and likely killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Humperdinck chooses Buttercup to be his bride, but his real intent is to start a war for personal gain. Humperdinck hires master criminal Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) and his gang, consisting of the giant Fezzik (Andre the Giant) and master swordsman Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), to kidnap Buttercup, kill her and blame the death on a neighbouring kingdom. A mysterious masked man in black gives chase, eventually disposing of Vizzini, rescuing Buttercup and escaping into the scary Fire Swamp. The masked man turns out to be Westley, coming back to reclaim his true love. But Humperdinck will not give up easily, and the lovers will need to overcome captivity and torture to seal their destiny.

Directed by Rob Reiner and breezily written by William Goldman, The Princess Bride is part romance adventure, part swashbuckler, and all clever satire. The package could not be any more perfect, as the film delivers action, thrills, laughs and pure first love for younger audience members, while maintaining a glint-in-the-eye edge of evil wit for their parents.

The overarching theme of true-love-will-conquer-all hovers over the film like an exquisite rainbow, and at the heart of the movie Robin Wright and Cary Elwes deliver honest performances full of heroism underpinned by the conviction that no matter what, they belong together. But The Princess Bride shines because of the diversity of interesting characters and sub-stories, and Goldman excels in creating a world of colourful scoundrels and side kicks. The charismatic Inigo Montoya carries a major revenge sub-plot of his own, and Mandy Patinkin has rarely been better as Inigo forces his way into a co-lead role with Buttercup and Westley. The transformation of Inigo and the giant Fezzik from bad guys to good allies is another strong anchor theme in the film, and the two also provide a steady stream of humour.

And our heroes have not one, not two, but three villains to contend with. Humperdinck may be the head antagonist, and he emerges as a paper tiger, a man equal parts unearned power and distasteful cowardice. More potent is the darkly menacing Count Tyrone, a heartless torturer with a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness. Meanwhile, in a relatively brief but unforgettable role, Wallace Shawn creates in Vizzini an inconceivably irritating criminal, a short man ruling over his gang with smarts until he outsmarts himself in a cerebral confrontation with the masked man in black. Billy Crystal and Carol Kane show up in small and campy comic relief parts.

Reiner respects the setting of his story and does not shy away from some mildly disturbing scenes of torture, and adds blood when necessary to emphasize the outcome of key sword battles. As a counterbalance and to relieve any mounting tension, a large part of the film's charm resides in the frequent returns to the grandson's bedroom, as he starts out full of skepticism but gradually warms up to all the thrills and yes, smoochy romance that the story being read by grandpa has to offer. For the young and old alike, The Princess Bride casts an immaculate magical spell.

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Movie Review: This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

A rock mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap is comedy at its sharpest. Poking loving fun at the world of heavy metal, director Rob Reiner and his cast of willing ad libbers cut a swath of biting satire that spares no target in the crazy music and touring world.

Documentary director Marty DiBergi (Reiner) sets out to capture an inside-look at the latest North American tour of British heavy metal legends Spinal Tap. Childhood friends Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) created the band in the 1960s, with Nigel the guitar wizard and David the guitarist / vocalist. Along with bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) they form the core of the band, while a succession of drummers have come and gone, most of them meeting inexplicably violent endings (including self-combustion). The band is trying to revive their fortunes in North America with a tour to coincide with the release of their latest album, Smell The Glove.

[Nigel is playing a soft piece on the piano] 
Marty DiBergi: It's very pretty. 
Nigel Tufnel: Yeah, I've been fooling around with it for a few months. 
Marty DiBergi: It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play. 
Nigel Tufnel: It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why. 
Marty DiBergi: It's very nice. 
Nigel Tufnel: You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of... 
Marty DiBergi: What do you call this? 
Nigel Tufnel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump". 

With manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) doing his best, the tour starts in New York and moves west, and it is soon apparent that all is not well. Dates are cancelled due to low attendance, the release of the album is delayed amidst a row with the record label about the cover art, and tensions start to tear the band apart. These intensify when David's girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) joins the tour, antagonizing both Nigel and Ian. With DiBergi's cameras capturing a band in freefall, the venues become smaller and stage mishaps become commonplace, including a malfunctioning futuristic pod trapping Derek and a wrongly-sized Stonehenge monument transforming the band into a laughing stock.

Guest and McKean create memorable rock stars, capturing the posturing, fake arrogance, and blankness behind the attempts at intelligence that only come from simple blokes achieving overwhelming success in an artificial world, and not quite knowing what to do with it. Their acting is brilliant, never less so than when they reminisce about the band's early years and start humming their earliest famous tunes, with genuine looks of joyful nostalgia.

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and... 
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten? 
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly. 
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? 
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? 
Marty DiBergi: I don't know. 
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? 
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven. 
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder. 
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? 
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

Reiner assembles the movie with the loving care of a documentary filmmaker, mixing live performances with the band's mounting on-stage and off-stage disasters, interviews with the band members, backstage and hotel room arguments and terrific black and white footage of Spinal Tap's earliest television appearances. In the process Spinal Tap becomes an incredibly real band, and This Is Spinal Tap is elevated from satirizing the subject matter to a brilliant satire of the documentary genre itself.

The comedy in This Is Spinal Tap is legendary. Nigel describing the speakers with volume knobs that go to eleven; Nigel having trouble with the platter of cold cuts and small bread squares; Derek performing an entire song trapped in a pod while a technician frantically attempts to pry it open; the band getting lost on their way from dressing room to stage; the elves dancing around the Stonehenge monument; and the ever worsening tour venues, including an Air Force base and finally an amusement park.

David St. Hubbins: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object. 
Ian Faith: I really think you're just making much too big a thing out of it. 
Derek Smalls: Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea.

It's all perfectly delivered with a straight face, both the subjects and makers of the documentary caught in the moment, putting the bravest face on events spiralling ever downwards. And farcical as it sounds, most real bands can fully identify with many of the film's most inventive moments.

This Is Spinal Tap is clever and witty in both form and content, an admirable blurring of fiction and reality in a sly musical package.

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