![]() They had a bromance before the term had even been coined. Vizzini is a total jerk to them, but they ignore it, together. It requires more than just sitting around, waiting to be adored. If you want a storybook romance, you need to write parts of it yourself.Īnd it hit me, suddenly, that the best partnership in the movie isn’t Buttercup and Westley’s. In the years since, I realized that’s utter bullshit. Romance was something that happened while you stood idly by and your man took care of everything. (Infuriating on so many levels – suicidal thoughts are a serious mental health issue, which the film treats frivolously.)Īnd while I remember being annoyed by Buttercup (the fireswamp scene, in which Westley simply talks at her and she nods, and then wanders off and almost dies, like, four times, particularly infuriated me), I took the film as gospel, and figured that’s how love worked. When all else fails, contemplate suicide. ![]() (Even as a kid, I remember yelling at Buttercup during the ROUS scene, begging her to do anything.) – When shit hits the fan, you should just stand there helplessly, without making even the slightest effort to help.Girl, you need to pull yourself together. Instead, just torment him and have him do things that you could have totally done yourself, like grabbing a pitcher which is right in front of you. If you love a guy, don’t actually tell him how you feel.Here are some of the cracked out takeaways about love that the movie left me with: Because while Buttercup has her moments (she jumps into water that’s filled with shrieking eels, she does her best to save Westley after the fire swamp, and she tells Humperdinck to shove it) she’s not a great heroine, and their dynamic is really dysfunctional. And it skewed my view of romance for the worst. Who would forgive you for accidentally getting married to someone else.īut when I think of his relationship with Buttercup, that’s where things start to fall apart for me. The sort of guy who laughs at your jokes and helps you navigate a fireswamp or an awkward family dinner. He’s funny and clever he has the perfect reply for everything and manages to be charming even when he’s been mostly dead all day. This scene, rewound and replayed countless times, ruined me for a number of years:Īnd while the main purpose of your adult years is to cringe at the stuff you loved as a kid, I found that when I rewatched the movie recently (I now a decade older than Cary Elwes was when he played the part), my heart still beats a little quicker for The Man in Black. He was, in my young mind, perfection, and when I dreamed of romance (which was unclear to me in my innocence, but I reasoned it involved lots of hand-holding and kissing and nothing else) it was with someone who was exactly like Westley. My first love was Westley, the film’s dashing protagonist. ![]() My first love was not my husband, nor any of the boyfriends who preceded him, who now reside in the hazy edges of my memory. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but there it is. Because (and I realize the blasphemy that is about to escape my lips, but here it is nevertheless): the love story at the heart of the movie is a really, really screwed up one. It also gave me a lot of ideas about the nature of romantic relationships. The problem is that the film didn’t stop at these practical, everyday tips. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.Never get involved in a land war in Asia.Shrieking eels always get louder before they’re about to feed on human flesh.Bride was a prolific teacher, and I learned all sorts of timeless lessons that were entirely relevant to the life of a 7-year-old. My parents were divorced when I was very young, and much of the time I gleaned what I needed to know about life from movies. It became an integral part of my childhood. Like most women my age – deer caught in the headlights of time, our mid-30s barreling down upon us like an SUV with shoddy brakes – I grew up watching The Princess Bride. ![]() But I can’t begin to explain the significance of that until I first tell you about my crazed relationship with the film itself. To which I will reply, enthusiastically, “OF COURSE IT SORT OF IS.”Īnd the payoff, travel-wise, is a rather big one, culminating in our visiting Haddon Hall, which served as the setting for Humperdinck’s castle. A brief note of impending awesomeness: for the next few days, I will be rambling, sometimes coherently, sometimes not, about The Princess Bride.īut Geraldine, you find yourself saying, isn’t this a travel blog?
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