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Monday 14 September 2015

The Princess Bride - Book Review


2.5/5 Stars
The Princess Bride
Muybridge/Goldman
Genre: Fantasy/Romance/Action








I was pretty excited to see this. For the strangest reason I believed, since I first saw the princess bride many years ago, that the book the grandfather was reading never actually existed, it was merely a plot device! I was wrong!

I am big fan of this movie, and I have seen probably it at least 5 times. Naturally I was interested to see if the book had anything to add to it – not really.

Synopsis:


Meet Buttercup, a farm girl with a silly name that is a diamond in the rough, if only she brushed her hair and bathed once and a while. She lives on a cow farm with her parents and a hired stable boy named Westley. Buttercup doesn’t care much for boys and would be happy just spending all of her time riding horses. That is until a duke and duchess come to their property to investigate how the make such ‘fine’ milk.

When Westley catches the duchesses eye, Buttercup becomes obsessed with what the duchess sees in Westley, and this brings her to realization that she has been in love with Westley for years without even realizing it! But Westley wasn’t the only one the Duke and Duchess noticed, the Duke could only stare at Buttercup and see her potential for beauty.

After the Duke and Duchess leave, and a sleepless night Buttercup professes her love to Westley to only have him close the door in her face. Heartbroken she spends the day crying in her room, until Westley comes later that to tell her that he loves her and is setting sail for America to make a new life for them, and that he will send for her.

But soon after news is brought that Westley’s ship has been attacked by pirates – pirates that leave no survivors. Buttercup is beyond devastated and vows never to love again. But how can this be?? How can a couple that loves each other so much be destroyed? Well… that is where the adventure begins…


My thoughts:

I was happy to see that the book didn’t stray too much for the movie at all. Except for the zoo of death which I think was rightfully cut because it is awful! Now you might be wondering if I loved the movie so much why did I give the book such a bad review if it was so similar to the movie?

Excellent question blog reader! I read the abridged version of this book and it had some unexpected narration within it. By this I mean, it explains a man’s hunt to find the Princess Bride novel for his son because his father read it to him and he loved it so much. What the man didn't know is his dad only read to him ‘the good parts’. Apparently the original story was needlessly fluffy so when Goldman re-released the abridge version he cut out these fluffy parts and TOLD the reader that he cut them out. It’s like the story was constantly being interrupted by it! And not in a cute way like the movie in like a “Originally Muybridge wrote 20 pages about this, and 12 pages about that, and another 8 pages about this, so I cut it because nothing eventful happened”. It completely pulls you out of the story. That and Buttercup almost seemed a bit heartless or fickle with her love for Westley in the book which didn’t come across in the movies…

I honestly don’t think the book added anything to the movie, except for making the bad guys being even bigger creeps. If you’re a big fan I guess give it a go, you may like it more than me, but to anyways one else I would not recommend. In this rare case the movie was better than the book.

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