Word: bride
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...Forbidden City all the life it once sustained: a detachment of troops clattering through the night to seize a baby from his crib and place him on the throne; the Emperor's English tutor (Peter O'Toole) flapping through the streets on his bicycle; an Emperor and his bride (the lovely, fragile Joan Chen) overwhelmed by their huge wedding chamber; the great courtyard filled with wailing eunuchs, dismissed by their ruler; a tennis court, so strangely out of place in these precincts and yet the locale where Pu Yi hears that he has been deposed -- all of this is Bertolucci...
Cocteau wove overt references to popular culture into his adaptation of the classic. Hints of thrillers, dime romances and detective films abound in the tale of the poet Orpheus's (Jim May) descent into Hades and return with his bride Eurydice (Magdalena Hernandez). Prascak, perhaps true to Cocteau's intentions, begins the play with a Madonna medley and transforms Death (Jennifer Lyn Bader) into a lovely Material Girl in white...
...accordance with the traditional laws of fairy-tale telling, The Princess Bride has a mawkishly happy ending, reinforcing the mistaken notion that a happy ending is a cliche. Even Reiner's framing device is trite: he has a grandfather, played by Peter "Columbo" Falk, read "the Princess Bride" fable to his ailing grandson...
...PRINCESS Bride is also plagued by an inept and poorly directed cast. Andre the Giant is endearing but inarticulate in his cameo role. Wallace Shawn, star of My Dinner With Andre, must have drunk too much in that flim, and after this role he should reconsider his career. And Wright, who makes her film debut in The Princess Bride should get out of acting before it is too late...
Although the film has been touted as an instant classic, a more appropriate description would be classic trash. A combination of classically insipid action and acting, classically artificial scenery and classic melodrama, The Princess Bride represents pop art at its pop worst...