Inconceivable! Is The Princess Bride One Of The Greatest Movies Of All Time?

I don’t know what it was about this 80’s action/adventure/romance movie, but when I was a child I became addicted to The Princess Bride.

My father had it recorded from TV on an old grimy VHS tape, with the title scrawled in pencil, and I would watch it over and over again. I think I watched it over 50 times. I prided myself on learning the dialogue and could spout entire sections from memory, much to my family’s initial enjoyment, and then eventual annoyance.

It turns out I wasn’t alone in my sentiments. I met many others throughout my life who also loved this movie deeply. Just like me, they could spout entire sections of dialogue, almost as a form of conversation. And it wasn’t just a great movie from the vantage point of my youth, I continued to love the movie as I grew older. Top film critics also showered it with praise (97% on rotten tomatoes)

Yet, for some reason that I’ve never understood this movie never gets mentioned on any lists of ‘greatest movies’.

Classic films that top many of the ’Best Movies Of All Time’ lists, such as Citizen Kane, & The Godfather are fantastic. Other modern hits like Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, are also high on my list. However, this one movie that I think should be talked about among these greats, isn’t even ON any of these lists.

Here are just a few reasons why I think The Princess Bride could be considered among the greatest of movies.

1. Rare & Perfect Balance Between Comedy Gold and Serious Themes

One element this movie absolutely nails is the perfect balance between deep, serious themes and comedy.

I’ve never seen another movie handle this so perfectly. The Princess Bride talks about important themes, like the meaning of pain, torture, true love, good vs. evil and more. Without razor sharp sensitivity, and/or some comic relief, movies that are based on these themes are at high risk of being too dark, cheesy, or cliche.

However, with the perfect dose of dry comedy to juxtapose the seriousness it allows the viewer to take in and digest these big themes while still enjoying a great, entertaining movie.

One particular moment that stands out occurs after the main character, Wesley, has just been tortured nearly to death. Pretty dark stuff.

Wesley’s friends take him to the local miracle healer ‘Miracle Max’ (played by Billie Crystal) to bring him back to life. Unfortunately, Miracle Max has recently retired and doesn’t want to help. Wesley’s friends beg Max to reconsider, claiming that saving Wesley would be a very ‘noble cause’. While this piques his interest, Max doesn’t fully believe them. So to test the claim, he lays Wesley on the table, blows air into his mouth using a bellows and then yells into his ear (in a thick Jewish Brooklyn accent, even though it’s supposed to be medieval Europe):

“Hey! Hello in there! What you got that’s worth living for?”, then he pushes on Wesley’s stomach.

Wesley blows out making a long sound: “Truuuuueeee Lovvvvvve”

Wesley’s friend exclaim “True love!! He said true love! You cannot ask for a more noble cause then that!”

Miracle Max looks up in deep sincerity: “Yes, true love is the greatest thing in the world… “

Then he pauses, “Except for a nice M.L.T… A mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, when the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomatoes are ripe, it’s so perky!”

The timing of this random, superficial comment following such a serious one, is funny enough on its own, but with the setting in medieval Europe, this reference to ‘mutton’ in an M.L.T. instead of bacon takes it over the top.

“True love is the greatest thing in the world… Except for a nice M.L.T… A Mutton, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich” — Miracle Max

There are too many moments like this in the film to name, but if you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about.

2. Fresh Twists on ‘The Hero’s Journey’

The story-writing structure known as ‘the hero’s journey’, coined by Joseph Campbell, runs through most of the greatest and most popular stories told in human history. Stories from The Odyssey, to Harry Potter, to Star Wars all feature this writing structure in one way or another.

The structure, at its essence, involves a hero going through a predictable set of stages to overcome their demons to win the day.

One proposed theory of why this writing structure is so popular is that it is an inherited psychological predisposition (i.e. an archetype), biasing humans to enjoy and actually anticipate stories to unfold in this manner.

The Princess Bride makes great use of this classic structure, but with its own unique twists.

For example in the classic heroes Journey the hero roughly goes from 1) being in a normal, often boring world, 2) to being called to adventure, to 3) achieving ’the ideal’ (e.g. rescuing the princess, or blowing up the death star and saving the universe).

In the Princess Bride, however, the movie STARTS OUT with the ideal. Wesley has already met his ultimate love, Buttercup, on a farm and they are living happily together. Then Wesley is ripped away from this ‘ideal world’, when he is kidnapped on the high seas by ‘The Dread Pirate Roberts’.

We are then reacquainted with Wesley several years later, and find out that he had befriended his captor, The Dread Pirate Roberts, learned a vast number of skills from him, and then eventually taken over his position when he retired. Wesley had gone on pirating in the name of Roberts, casting fear everywhere he went. It was only after this that he returned to find his love about to marry another, and goes on a rampage to save her.

This provides another interesting dynamic where we don’t know if Wesley is good or bad anymore. Whether he is actually a hero, or if he is a villain.

While still using key elements of the hero’s journey, like overcoming major obstacles, and having a mentor, The Princess bride mixes up elements in an interesting way that makes it feel fresh and different from other classic tales of its era.

3. Brilliant Action

Despite being a comedy/romance, and taking place in a dingy medieval Europe, this movie also has some powerful action scenes.

The pinnacle of this is the famous sword fight between Wesley and Inigo. Not only do they sword-fight impressively while spouting an intricate, funny dialogue, but they both aren’t even using their good hand until the end of the fight.

I can’t explain it any better than this critic, Carrie Rickey from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Patinkin, the most dazzling movie swordsman since Errol Flynn, steals the movie with his athletic grace and delivery of lines…”

See the clip here:

4. Pioneering Use Of Nostalgia

Before nostalgia became a common commodity, an overt technique, used to pull heartstrings in film and television like in TV’s ‘Stranger Things’, Princess Bride featured nostalgia as an actual story-telling element in the movie.

The movie does this in a few different ways, but one of the most obvious is the way the story is narrated. The movie starts out with a young boy staying home sick from school. His grandfather comes to pay him a visit and wants to read him a book and reads him the story of The Princess Bride. For many people, the idea of a parent or grandparent reading them a story while being sick in bed brings back warm memories of childhood, and the use of this storytelling method works well to weave in the book it is based on.

As an extra and unforeseen element of nostalgia, the young boy is played by Fred Savage, who played Kevin in The Wonder Years, so it was an extra dose of nostalgia for kids who grew up watching that show.

Why Would It Not Be Considered Among The Greatest?

To be clear, I am not saying The Princess bride is necessarily #1 in any particular movie genre (e.g. comedy, action, or drama etc.), however in combination of all these categories, I think it is among the greatest.

And that is perhaps where the movie stumbles in the eyes of critics. For some reason, critics seem to prefer movies that fit into one clear category or box, and movies that straddle the boundaries between these categories are often unfairly punished.

Part of what makes The Princess Bride great is the way it straddles boundaries. Yet perhaps because it sometimes treats drama comedically, and comedy seriously, it makes it hard for critics to consider it among the greatest.

You Decide

I haven’t gotten into many other good reasons such as the incredible acting of Mandy Patinkin, and the classic scene featuring Wesley and Vizzini’s ‘‘battle of wits’.

However, to put it simply, if you are a true fan of this movie and you meet someone who doesn’t like it, your feelings may be echoed by this great meme from the movie:

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

PS. I only found out about the very recent death of the creator of The Princess Bride (both the movie and the screenplay) after I wrote this blog piece. Very sad news and also very strange timing as I had an urge to put this piece together a couple of months ago.

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Adam Kagan is a writer and entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada. Follow him on Twitter: @roostersosse