The Princess Bride (1987)

The Princess Bride (1987)

Format: Blu-ray

Last night our whole family watched The Princess Bride together and we all loved it, me, my wife, Danielle, my 12 year-old daughter and DJ my 16 year-old son. The movie partially succeeds in pleasing such a vast range of ages. For the girls there is romance, princes and princesses, for the guys there is swordplay and adventure and for the teenager who is cynical about all these things there is a Python-esque sense of humor. It's like Monty Python and the Holy Grail but with a softer heart. The performances are all "inconceivably" great and part of the fun is discovering who the actors are, beneath all their magnificent costumes. As a matter of fact, I would suggest you don't read the credits before you watch the film. By the way, NEVER read the back of a DVD box before you watch a movie. Many times they give away three-fourths of the story and sometimes spoil the film.

The Princess Bride was originally released on laserdisc on The Criterion Collection, company I really love. You will hear a lot more about the The Criterion Collection in the future but let me say I always meant to pick this up on laser disc.

The Criterion Collection laser discs, DVDs and Blu-rays all have spine numbers, so you can be sure to get them all. Some of us true Criterion geeks shelf them according to their spine numbers. On Criterion-related blogs and podcasts there has been much discussion on the significance of the spine numbers. For example, Guillermo del Toro's 2001 film The Devil's Backbone will be released later this summer as spine number 666.

So anyways, The Princess Bride was spine number 40 on Criterion Laserdisc and was in CAV, which offered the best picture quality and meant the film was spread out to four sides. The film had no special features and cost around $80 so I couldn't justify buying it. Later on, Criterion re-released it as a Special Edition laserdisc with audio commentary by the director Rob Reiner ("Meat Head" from All In the Family - more on that series later on...) and some other cast members and a lot of other goodies. This was released in the last days of laserdisc and is now a collector's item. It originally cost $100 and the cover is beautiful.

Here it is:

The point is I bought this on Blu-ray on sale on amazon for $5. After watching the Prince video earlier in the afternoon, Princess looked and sounded fantastic. It reminded me of how lucky we are to be living in an age when we can basically have private screening rooms in our homes that are usually better quality than the local cinema. For $5 we got admission for four into the "Pride Theater," as we call it with fruit salad as a snack. Also, the Blu-ray has a DVD version of the movie, audio commentary from Rob Reiner and lot of extra games and short films we haven't even looked at yet. I used to justify buying those expensive Criterions because of all the extra supplemental features you got, which sometimes could take weeks to get through. Those supplemental features were like a mini film school if you watched them all, and they significantly enhanced your appreciation of the film and those people involved in making it. If we had gone to the cinema instead, we probably would have to pick a movie that would be not so great (we've already seen the fantastic new Star Trek film and we would have spent almost $60 for the whole family, with popcorn, soda and M&M's.

If you are considering creating a home theater for your family and you have the money I would say it's a great investment right now. You can get a decent Blu-ray player for under $200 (PLEASE don't buy a DVD player!), a large screen high def TV for under $600 a "home theater ready" box of speakers for surround sound and an inexpensive AV receiver and you be on your way. I admit my equipment is a bit more high end than that but you can upgrade through the years. Soon enough, you'll make your investment back in what you would have spent going to the local multiplex (with all those rude stupid people using their cell phones and spilling their popcorn on you.) ...and you can get the entire series of Die Hard films (4 altogether with much supplements) for $25 on amazon right now.

NEXT SCREENING: The Prisoner: The entire British television series from the early 1960's on Blu-ray!