25 top comedies of all-time

25 The Princess Bride (1987)
Dir Rob Reiner (Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin)

Quintessential quote: ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’

Strange to think that after all the Oscar plaudits and box-office ker-ching! that came with his scripts for both ‘Butch Cassidy’ and ‘All the President’s Men’, genre-expanding author William Goldman’s 1973 fantasy novel should take the best part of 15 years to grace the multiplexes. It was well worth the wait. Sweetly romantic, tirelessly quotable and light as a feather, Reiner’s adaptation doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel, but rather mines humour from filling in the backstories of its stock characters with jumbled neuroses and bizarre quirks. So we have the hissable villain with insoluble middle-management delegation issues, the mercenary overburdened by a crippling childhood trauma and a dashing hero who isn’t exactly the sharpest sword in the armoury all trading some of the craftiest zingers ever penned. ALD