h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[Hey Kat! This is the posting with the review suggestions for your review. Check out what I have said here, and if any of it doesn’t make sense, or you don’t like it, let me know and I’ll try and figure out something else to say! I’ve done the review by interleaving my comments with your text, making amendments as I go so you can see what I am suggesting things should look like.]

“Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favorite [I’ll give you this one, but in the rest of the English-speaking world it’s probably spelled “favourite”…!] pass-times [you “pass time”, you don’t spend your spare time in the past!] were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. His name was Westley. But she never called him that...” [THIS needs quotation marks!]

The Princess Bride is quite possibly the best movie ever made. It's classified as a Comedy/Fairy-tale, but it['s got][“it has”? – Sorry, now I’m just getting picky…!] it all. It has a narrator, a good guy, a girl, kidnappers, bad guys, swordfighting, a giant, a Spaniard, adventure, revenge, a genius, an albino, a miracle-worker, eels, rodents of unusual size, and of course - as all fairy-tales should - a happy ending [check the punctuation here…].

“If you have not seen Princess Bride yet you have committed a great travesty and must watch this movie immediately.” [is this a quote? If so, by who? If not, why is it in quotation marks…?]

This movie is one of Rob Reiner’s best. [WHO IS ROB REINER? A bit of explanation for the cinematically ignorant (such as me…!) would probably be a good thing here] It's very clever [how – e.g. verbally or visually?] and has a lot of great lines and screwy plot twists (the Life Sucking Machine?). It takes a completely unexpected tack for such a fairy tale setting: it makes fun of EVERYTHING[. It doesn't take itself or anything else seriously,][<-- I suspect you can just delete this entire phrase – unless you want to expand on the point the phrase makes, which you would probably be better off doing in another sentence (possibly the sentence after this one)!] including True Love. At the same time, besides [you might be better off saying something like “as well as laughing at” here instead of “besides”, which has a nasty tendency not to make sense if you think about it too hard…] the funny scenes you do come to care about stuff like whether Inigo gets his revenge, whether that obnoxious prince is gonna get bitch-slapped and whether Buttercup smartens up. Miracle Max is hilarious and Cary Elwes is delightfully campy as our hero Westley. Finally we cannot forget the Andre the Giant and his cohorts. They get to utter some of the greatest lines of the movie.

[I suspect you might need a more detailed description of the characters in here. You have said that as a watcher you come to care about them, but haven’t described them very much in any other way. A brief outline and description of who (apart from Cary Elwes and Andre the Giant) were actually in it would probably also be good. I think you might be better off putting the point about the characters who utter the “greatest lines of the movie” closer to the page reference to the page which has the lines – that way you may be able to start playing the game without even leaving the page!]

Like many cult films, Princess Bride has its own drinking game. The rules are very simple. Drink when a catch phrase is mentioned. For example, the line “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Other memorable lines from the [fix the paragraph alignment, line break, whatever this is!] movie are listed at [I REALLY, REALLY LIKE THIS IDEA!!!!!!!!]

[NEW PARAGRAPH?]A fellow Princess Bride fan once told me that there are two types of people in this world:[SPACE HERE] those who like "The Princess Bride", and those who haven't seen it. I think that about sums up everything.

The target audience:
Are you alive? Good. Then you qualify.
People who dig really big rats.

[This is a really good review: funny, evocative and concise. It does need a little more, though (well, you didn’t think I’d just TELL you you’d done a great job, would I?). Check the suggestions for sub-edits and additions in the text, between square brackets: “[]”. The posting of movie quotes on a separate page is a master stroke! Conceptually I think it's great - very much in the spirit of the film...]

[Let me know when you think it’s in a better final state – or if you really think it can’t be made better!]

Regards,

H.

PS, just as a thought, I suspect you should also include a brief description of the basis for the story: little boy, sick in bed, having the story read to him by his grandfather, etc. It's the thing which ties the whole movie up, and makes it all make sense:

"As you wish..."

Regards,

H.

Excuse the intrusion.....

Wow Hypoman, you really did a sub-edit job here. Have you applied for sub-editor? You might think about it.......however, I must point out that it might be different in England, but in America the word is spelled "pastime"

And Kat, don't let H make you change "favorite" to "favourite." If you are American, you should write like one. We don't need those crazy u's!

Frink, I think you might be right about the "pastime" thing - please excuse my oversight! You too, Kat!

I have applied to be a sub-editor, but I'll have to wait and see what happens...

Kat, learn to spell like an English speaker - if Fenchurch can do it, so can you (although I am in haste to admit that this preference is entirely due to the way I have been brought up: you can spell like that if you want to, just don't expect me not to notice)!

hypoman, i bequeth you the freedom to change whatever you would like with my article, add, delete, ect..

just tell fenny about it when you decide it is worthy and make sure we both get credit.

kat

by the way, in response to what you said about me in the karaoke/rave forum i was just being silly and making fun of my raver friends.

You didn't even mention the book, that the film was based on. William Goldman (Marathon Man, All the Presidents Men) out did himself. Claiming it was an abridged version of a story by S. Morgernstern, a medieval writer from Florence (which it might be, I never did find out), the book not only goes into slightly more detail (in The Swordfight they discuss fencing tutors, including a legless scotman who's technique was brilliant against attacks from above), but has a whole area not even touched by the film. The book by S Morgernstern was ment to be a political satire, but Goldmans father, when he read it to the author, took out all the dull bits. Goldman only found this out when he gave it to his son, who was quickly bored by the full book. Throughout the book, in red text, it describes the bits taken out, like a 20 page list of clothes, meant to show how one kingdom was superior to another, though percieved as barbarians.........Sorry about the splurge of conciousness there, but you should definatly read the book

i know about the book, i even read it. i have just been to lazy to add the info. also, i procrastinate