The Griffin or the Agate

Author's Note: Since this review was written a Collector's Edition DVD has been released, and contains many of the features I felt were missing from the original issue.

Rob Reiner's presentation of the William Goldman adaptation of S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure is one of the classic fantasy films of all time. It's the one that I use to successfully introduce my friends to the world of fantasy, and one I can watch over and over, especially now that it's on DVD and I can skip over the Fred Savage scenes. I'm speaking of course, of The Princess Bride.
     As I said, the movie itself is delightful. An incredible cast includes Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright (now Robin Wright-Penn), Christopher Guest, and Andre the Giant, as well as many others in bit parts that helped make the movie so enjoyable (Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and his lovely wife Valerie, for instance). Particularly after reading the book (read my review), I can't help but appreciate the accuracy in both casting and script. In case you're one of the three fantasy fans who hasn't seen it, the story goes like this: Boy meets girl, they fall in love, he leaves to make his fortune, she hears he's dead and gets engaged to a prince, he hears about her engagement and comes back to rescue her. As Peter Falk says, "Swordfighting, adventure, true love blah blah blah [note to Laura - get the exact line to put in here]". That pretty much covers it.
     The DVD release, unfortunately, is a waste of shelf space. Extras are sparse and fairly standard - a widescreen version, the theatrical trailer, your choice of French or Spanish subtitles, a Spanish dub, scene selections. The 'collectible booklet' mentioned on the case is a two page spread with a couple of anecdotes - William Goldman has more (and more interesting) things to say about the making of the movie in the intro to the 25th anniversary edition of the book.
     Since the movie was directed by a someone well known and featured several notable actors and actresses, one wonders why they couldn't come up with anybody to do a commentary. Even if Reiner was unavailable or unwilling to do a full length commentary track, surely the cast and crew could have been interviewed and spliced together for commentary a la the early James Bond special edition DVDs. If you're switching your entire movie collection to DVD, or haven't gotten around to buying The Princess Bride on VHS yet, go ahead and get it. Otherwise, cross your fingers and hope for a special edition that actually has some content.   §

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