William Goldman, �The Princess Bride�
�Get used to disappointment.�
Hah! I bet by that line you thought I was going to say this sucked, didn�t you? DIDN�T YOU?!? Sucker! Because after a few days of desperation, desolation and despair, this was, as Rik Ocasek and company once warbled on about, just what I needed.
I mean, yes, everybody has seen the movie, and the majority of them liked it. I like it. (Taking on Pee Wee Herman voice) LIKE! But I don�t own a copy of it; Andre the Giant is a little too hard to understand for one, and Buttercup, who is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, is a little too white bread for my tastes.
Still, like Pee Wee�s Big Adventure, Strange Brew, Evil Dead 2, and pretty much any episode of The Simpsons, there�s at least a dozen great lines to quote from.
Anytime I�m sent an invitation, whether I plan on going or not I respond by saying, �Hallo. My name is Inigo Montoya; You killed my father. Prepare to die.� When I had my fake wedding, the one order we put to Reverend Brad was to start the ceremony (after Your Mother played the Darth Vader Death March for the processional) by saying �Mawidge.�
He forgot. But we were all pretty drunk by that point.
But that�s the movie, and this ain�t a movie review site. Where the film is cute and charming, it�s almost too cute, which makes it easy to pan. The book on the other hand was cute and charming, and wholly endearing almost from the beginning, once Goldman drops his exposition dealing with his cold wife, his fat son and his extramarital longings and gets started with the actual story.
Goldman wrote the screenplay for Rob Reiner�s film version, so it would make sense that there are no surprises here. And really, there aren�t — the film is very close to the book in terms of events, and there is very little skipped over. But the story line and characters are so good that it does the impossible — it makes you forget what you know is going to happen, letting it feel fresh again. That�s an amazing feat.
And it was an amazing book. This was the kind of book that I hated to put down, and I found myself having to put it down a lot over the last five days. And now that it�s done, I again hated the fact that I had to put it down.
And that�s what I meant by saying get used to disappointment.
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School Progress: Gathered applications for Columbia, University of Oregon, University of Florida, and The USC Annenberg School for Communication. Requested informational packet from UC Berkeley.
