Investing in Family Movie Review: "The Princess Bride"

You don’t need me to tell you finding a movie these days the whole family can enjoy can be a challenge. That's why we here at MomVesting are starting with a new kind of “Investing in Family” post: the family-focused movie review. For this round, we’ll take a step back in time to bring you an almost-oldie, but a goodie: "The Princess Bride." I’ll just warn you all up front: I love "The Princess Bride." It is in my top two favorite movies of all time (right up there with "Gone With the Wind"). I’ll try not to drone on and on about this modern classic while presenting you with the information you’ll need to make the choice whether or not to bring the flick to your at-home flat screen.

Synopsis

In short, "The Princess Bride" is a fairytale of sorts, focusing first on the love story of Buttercup and her farm boy, Westley, and, later, the events surrounding a few-years-older Princess Buttercup and her impending nuptuals to Prince Humperdinck. Throw in one giant, a few shreeking eels and an evil count with six fingers on one hand and you have a very entertaining (if not comedic) yarn that spawned such well-loved phrases like “Have fun stormin’ the castle!” and “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The Nuts and Bolts

Language: Really, this movie is very clean and tame. There is one solid swear word in the whole piece; near the end, a character utters the phrase “son of a bitch.”

Sex/Nudity: Not a whole lot going on in this category, either. There are a few kissing scenes, and our hero at one point does remark on the heroine’s “perfect breasts.”

Violence: The movie does feature some violence, including the deaths of some characters and a few mildly frightening sequences. Parents should know a man dies (albeit hilariously – he’s literally laughing until he falls over) of poisoning, while a villainous count is stabbed to death. There are some sword fighting sequences, and the hero does manage to best a giant by using a type of choke hold to cause the giant to pass out. Princess Buttercup is in peril at a few points in the movie, first from large eel-like creatures and then “the dangers of the fire swamp” which include fire, large rats who like to bite and amped-up quicksand. And though she’s not aware of it, her life is in danger as the prince plots to use her death as a means to start a war with a neighboring country. Our hero also faces and battles the Fire Swamp obstacles and then is subjected to “the machine” – a contraption ran by water that somehow sucks the years away from a life.

The movie has a PG rating, meaning the “content is mild in impact.” I feel that though there are some sequences of violence, it is mild, especially when compared to what Hollywood routinely cranks out these days. The emphasis in this film is on the story, which, at its heart, is a love story. There’s no animation or CGI graphics to be found; it’s actors telling a tale.

I will say my husband and I recently watched this movie with our six-year-old twin daughters. They didn’t seemed to be bothered by any of the movie’s scenes, and one declared it the best movie ever. My sentiments exactly.

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