The Movie: OK. So I already owned The Princess Bride. But the original version is letterboxed (actually it's a dual sided disc, one for letterboxed widescreen, and the other for pan and scan), and that was enough reason for me to also want to get the Special Edition version which is anamorphic widescreen. And besides, I'm giving my old DVD player to my sister, and I figure, I might as well throw in my old Princess Bride for her as well since she doesn't own any DVD's yet.

If you haven't seen this movie, you absolutely must. It's one of the funniest movies ever made. Sure, when I was a kid, I was put off by this movie's girly title. But I got over that, and you manly men should as well, as this movie is one of the great things I remember about my childhood.

The DVD: Well, I already covered the first major difference between the two versions, and that is that the regular version is a dual sided disc with both pan-and-scan and widescreen letterboxed versions. The Special Edition on the other hand comes only in anamorphic widescreen format. The anamorphic transfer looked just OK, and actually had some problems with gradients... in some places (especially mist) you could clearly see stepping. Ooops. This effect is not so pronounced in the original version. Both versions have a 5.1 soundtrack, but I didn't feel like sitting down to scrutinize whether they were the same or of the special edition had a spiffed up version. Also, the Special Edition was broken down into more chapter divisions than the original version.

Where the "Special Edition" really shines though is in the special features. The original version has a theatrical trailer, and that's about it. The special edition comes with documentaries about the film (both old and brand new), a little documentary thing made with a video camera on the set narrated by Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, still photos, two different audio commentary tracks (one from director Rob Reiner and the other from the writer William Goldman)... and my personal favorite -- the TV commercials. There are a number of TV commercials included here, but my favorite is the one where they interview the people coming out of the movie theater, in their full 1987 clothes and hair glory! Did we really all look like that back then? Why yes, we did!

Both versions surprised my with their booklets (liner notes?) that unlike most DVD's which pretty much only have a chapter listing and some photos, actually has some information about the movie in it... with the Special Edition's version being a bit more fleshed out. So is the Special Edition worth it? Well for me it was, but there is one thing to keep in mind -- since the Special Edition came out this year, the regular version has gone down in price quite a bit... but the Special Edition does come with more stuff.