The Princess Bride (1987)

      The Princess Bride has a unique twist in which the story takes place in two different times and locations. The first location is with a Grandfather reading his sickly grandson a story to cheer him up and make him feel better. The second location is the fantasy world of Florin, which is the setting of the book the grandfather is reading. The movie switches between the two locations throughout the movie, but mostly in the beginning when the impatient grandson frequently interrupts his grandfather with cries of disgust and boredom. As the story intensifies, the grandson becomes more and more engulfed by the reading. The story starts off with Princess Buttercup falling in love with her farm boy, Wesley. As they both fall for each other Wesley goes off to try and search for riches so they can marry, and never returns. Buttercup is told that he was attacked by the relentless Dread Pirate Roberts and is devastated. She then reluctantly agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck. When Buttercup is kidnapped by three dimwitted criminals, a masked man in black uses his wits to defeat each of these three criminals and saves Buttercup. It is later revealed that the man in black is Wesley, who was the new Dread Pirate Roberts. Humperdinck recaptures Buttercup and devises a plan to secretly kill her. When Wesley finds out about the marriage and Humperdinck's plan to kill Buttercup, he works with 2 of the criminals to save her, defeating Humperdinck and saving the day.
      The director of the film, Rob Reiner, did a great job with the performances of the actors, and expressing his meaning of the film: love conquers all. The use of dialogue in this film to help drive the plot was an interesting technique that worked well for the film. For example, Wesley revealed his identity by saying the phrase "As you wish," which he had repeated several times in the beginning of the film as a response to Buttercup's commands on the farm. The camera work in this film helped establish the fantasy environment by panning over the large, beautiful landscapes of "Florin" in the beginning of the film. The obvious differences in setting between the real world and Florin made it easy to identify which world we were in at any given time. The editing of the fight scenes in this film also added to the intensity of the moment with sharp, quick cuts in the action that never ruined the fights' continuity. The clever and humorous dialogue kept the audience interested in the movie throughout the whole film.