The Princess Bride -- low-key epic, tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler, laugh-out-loud love story -- doesn't just bestow chills, thrills and grownup giggles. It also proffers fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles. Not to mention four white steeds. And kissing.

At first glance, writer William Goldman and director Rob Reiner seem to have the classical story elements in their proper places: a breathtaking Princess (Robin Wright in her big-screen debut); her star-crossed heart-throb (Cary Elwes); a darkly handsome, soon-to-be-King Prince (Chris Sarandon); a mysterious pirate clad in Zorro black; and a curious trio (Tony winner Mandy Patinkin, actor-comedian Wallace Shawn and wrestling superstar Andre the Giant) of self-described "poor lost circus performers" who turn out to be almost dastardly kidnappers.

But two-time Academy Award winner Goldman and actor-cum-director Reiner quickly turn tradition on its head. The Princess's blond-bombshell true love is a farm boy, not royalty, and the splendid Prince isn't bonny at all, but an Evil One, full of darkest intrigue, with a sadistic sidekick to boot.

Other interlopers arrive in the form of comedy talent from both sides of the pond, the Yanks represented by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and Valerie, husband-and-wife conjurers, and the Brits by Peter Cook as an Impressive Clergyman and Mel Smith as a jolly Albino torturer.

As in his radically different first three films, This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing and Stand by Me, Reiner's strong suit is his handling of the actors and their characters, a view supported by Christopher Guest who also worked with the director on and in This Is Spinal Tap. Reiner himself told the Village Voice that "what people say to each other and how they behave is much more valuable than a bunch of flashy images."

To drape the disparate elements of a film-within-a-story onto the framework of a cheek-pinching grandfather (Peter Falk) reading an adventure book to his unwilling grandson (Fred Savage) required an extraordinary balancing act, an experience Reiner called "walking a tightrope." But it was the budding of respect and love for the old man in the boy, rather than the fanciful aspects of Goldman's original, that first attracted the director to the project. Reality born of fantasy.

Although Reiner considers it a movie for adults, the screen version of The Princess Bride, like the director's adaptation of Stephen King's The Body into the 1986 sleeper, Stand by Me (for which he was nominated as "Best Feature Film Director" by the Directors' Guild of America), has been softened at the edges since the book appeared in 1973 with the unwieldy but telling title of The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure: The "Good Parts" Version, Abridged by William Goldman. The author, who started the book for his two young daughters, says it is "the one thing I care most about of anything I've ever written."

The film's language is deft, hip, sophisticated -- full of rhyming banter, alliteration and literary allusion. By the time the good guys get past the Cliffs of Insanity and the Fire Swamp to the Pit of Despair, one half expects John Bunyan's Christian to pop up behind the torture machine.

And funny. The comedy runs the gamut from slapstick to standup, farce to highly literate satire. In fact, partly because of the distraction of the derring-do and partly because of Reiner's underplayed style of directing, much of the subtler humor is lost the first time around, its flavor more appreciated on subsequent viewings.

Everyone gets his turn. Wrestling superstar Andre the Giant, at 7'5", 525 pounds, complains in a French accent, "It's not my fault being the biggest and strongest. I don't even exercise." Christopher Guest, as the malevolent six-fingered Count Rugen, casually comments, "I'm sure you've discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. At present I'm writing the definitive work on the subject." And kvetching sorcerer Billy Crystal whines, "Why don't you give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?"

For the kiddies the Goldman-Reiner team slips in such phrases as "slimiest weakling ever to crawl the earth" and "miserable, vomitous menace."

Nor is Hollywood itself forgotten. The "battle of wits for the princess to the death" produces a poisoned goblet duel to rival Danny Kaye's classic "chalice from the palace" scene in The Court Jester. And six months' training with a fencing master in England gave Mandy ("Prepare to die!") Patinkin and Cary Elwes the mastery to provide the most fun swordfight, left- or right-handed, since Errol Flynn took to the battle.

Okay, so maybe it's slightly bent. Maybe its sweetness does have a sharp edge. But still . . . maybe a good fairy tale, like most of the rest of us, never really totally grows up.
-- SHARON McCORMICK

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