The Princess Bride

It was Ryan's birthday two days ago. We had a lovely dinner with the family at the restaurant called Spectacular View. (Pictures are yet to be uploaded because he has them.) The view wasn't really that spectacular. The entire place could really use a bit of ambiance and re-decorating, but we had a great dinner nonetheless. On the plus side, Ryan got two birthday cakes, both extremely delicious! One of them was an unexpected present from a special student who's extremely generous with everything. (Thanks, Madam!) So anyway, I thought the day ended with just that dinner and with us distributing the cake to the customers of LOLZ (the business we put up together -- an Internet Cafe), but no it didn't. See, Ryan's an unpredictable sweet guy who'd research, download and watch cheesy, romantic flicks with me. He also knows my "anti-social" nature and thus, has downloaded a ton of indie films for me (err... both of us) to enjoy. Guys are known to love the action-filled types of films but I'm not really into that. The more conversations there are in the movie, the more likely I'd watch it. And Ryan can actually sit through something that would put others to sleep. So we had another movie night and we watched The Princess Bride.

I feel like such a loser for discovering this wonderful gem of a movie only now when it was released way back in 1987 and has probably been shown in Cinemax a couple of times or something. Plus, it stars Mandy Patinkin in his best role ever. It prolly was one of the first feature films Robert Wright Penn has done too and she was so adorably pretty and innocent. Ah, the magic of true love and a beautiful narrative. I love it that the film was able to preserve the witty narrative style of the book where it was based from. And as the grandfather said, the movie has everything: comedy, romance, adventure, pirates, torture, sword fight, battle of wits, strength and steel; what's not to love? What's more, the screenplay is so clever it brings me to tears and makes me burst with happiness all at the same time. I love how each characters fit into their stereotypical role and how that played out so well for the film. Big LOLs for the Albino, the Miracle worker and his wife. Everyone has a story to tell and that darn, Prince Humperdinck is so easy to be disgusted upon. Vizzini is more lovable than he is.

One thing that's most memorable about the film is it's brilliant screenplay. The lines are forever etched in my memory. I even made a drawing for my most favorite one. I'm probably going to do series of drawings for this film just for the LOLz of it. There are a lot of them in the movie's facebook page. Even until now, the film has a fiercely loyal following and I just became part of the cult. Overall, this is such a charming film and no matter how much of a cynic you are, it somehow makes you believe that truly love really does conquer it all. The film is also one of the most faithful and tasteful transition from the written word to the silver screens. Comic book transitions to the big screen have disappointed me for so long (with the exception of Spiderman) and book to movie transitions suck big time (hello, Twilight and Nicholas Sparks based films -- not that I'm a fan but they become cornier in the movies).

So, I really thank Ryan for this one. It's his birthday and yet, he's the one who made me happy. I guess that's what true love is for me. ^_^