The Princess Bride - Should It Be Considered a Classic?
"As you wish." In the late 1980s, it was this sentence that melted the hearts of millions of viewers. Women dreamed of having a Westley of their very own, but heartwarming does not a classic make. There is no denying that The Princess Bride is a good film that undoubtedly brought acclaim to both director Rob Reiner and its cast, but what about it exactly deserves to be brought into the realm of visionary masterpieces like Gone With The Wind and Titanic? Or can it be considered more of a cult film like The Room or The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Well, it may actually be somewhere in between.
The film opens with a young boy (Fred Savage), sick at home, receiving a visit from his grandfather (Peter Falk), who begins to read to him the story of The Princess Bride. The grandfather tells him of a young woman named Buttercup (Robin Wright) and her farmboy Wesley (Cary…show more content… Mawwage is what bwings us togevah today. Mawwage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam.” from the clergyman with some sort of speech impediment.
According to Caitlin Kelly with The New Yorker:
“When the movie opened, in 1987, it didn’t tank at the box office, but it didn’t take off, either—the kind of mediocre performance that dooms most movies to three-for-ten-dollar bins at drugstores. But in the years that followed “The Princess Bride” found new life on VHS, slowly accumulating an audience whose enthusiasm for the story and, especially, for the many quotable moments, that would make “Princess Bride” a cult classic.” Director Rob Reiner and author/screenwriter William Goldman no doubt wanted to faithfully adapt the 1973 novel and simply tell a fun and memorable story. What they instead achieved was a film so lovable and quotable that it would become a classic with a cult following that would soar the film into one of today’s best known, and best loved,