MIT Lecture Series Committee

November 15 & 16, 2013

Rated PG
98 minutes

view trailer

format: 35mm

The Princess Bride (1987)

FREE admission and popcorn, sponsored by the de Florez Fund for Humor!

Pick up FREE passes this weekend to the Lone Survivor advance screening!

This movie is from 1987, but our 35mm print is not! We have a very nice print from 2009 to show you this weekend!

Based on William Goldman's novel of the same name, The Princess Bride is staged as a book read by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his ill grandson (Fred Savage). Falk's character assures a romance-weary Savage that the book has much more to deliver than a simpering love story, including but not limited to fencing, fighting, torture, death, true love, giants, and pirates. Indeed, The Princess Bride offers a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale depicting stable boy-turned-pirate Westley's journey to rescue Buttercup (Robin Wright), his true love, away from the evil prince (Chris Sarandon), whom she had agreed to marry five years after learning of what she had believed to be news of Westley's death. With help from Prince Humperdinck's disgruntled former employee Miracle Max (Billy Crystal), swordsman Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), and a very large man named Fezzik (Andre the Giant), the star-crossed lovers are reunited. [www.allrovi.com]

2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of William Goldman's novel The Princess Bride, and last year was the film's 25th anniversary!

Heroic fantasies, we often feel, should be lighter than air, hot as dragon fire, fast as a sword in sunlight. And that's mostly what we get from the delightful The Princess Bride -- along with some bracing humor and foolery.
      -- Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times. Read this review.