We open with Peg (Wiest), a door-to-door cosmetics saleslady who has clearly saturated the local market and who seems ready to go home empty-handed until she looks up and notices, as if for the first time, the gothic castle that looms over her otherwise flat-as-a-board neighborhood. Investigating, she finds the castle inhabited only by a nearly silent artificial boy (Depp) who has razor-sharp carving and cutting implements for hands. Edward is shy, socially awkward and obviously a destructive force even when he prefers not to be; he explains that he's "not finished." Touched by his sad story, Peg brings Edward home to her family, which includes blond daughter Kim (Ryder) and remarkably even-tempered husband Bill (Arkin, in a marvelously underplayed performance).

Edward's shears, intended to be temporary, became his permanent appendages when his creator (Vincent Price, in his final film role) died just before installing something more suitable for mixed company. They have their uses, as Edward proves a spectacular prodigy in dog grooming, topiary trimming and hair styling, and an irresistible lust-object for randy neighbor Joyce (a hilarious Kathy Baker). But they're also dangerous to himself and to others, a handicap that initially renders Edward an outcast to Kim and her arrogant bully of a boyfriend, Jim (Hall).

Ultimately, as Edward becomes more forlorn and Jim becomes more threatening, Kim finds herself falling in love with this boy whose face is crisscrossed with accidentally self-inflicted scars. But can there be any possible future for these two goofy kids? And is any Frankenstein story complete without the phenomenon of the villagers who turn on the creation?

When the director yelled "Cut!", he meant it

Edward Scissorhands is clearly a fable, a subgenre of fantasy that seems to have baffled some of the era's more literal-minded critics. They wanted to know, how come Edward's inventor used razor-sharp shears, of all things, as Edward's temporary hands? (Answer: Because otherwise the story wouldn't work.) How come it seems that nobody in the neighborhood noticed the mad scientist's lair on the horizon until Peg looked up? (Because they didn't.) How come nobody among Peg's immediate friends and family took care to blunt or at least sheath Edward's deadly appendages before he hurt somebody? (Again, because that's just logic, and logic is completely irrelevant in a story like this.) How come Ed is so deft with those blades when carving something but so clumsy that he cannot avoid hurting himself with them? (Because. Stop trying to figure it out and start feeling it.) How come none of the local meteorologists working in this area in subsequent years have realized that the snowfalls originate from Vincent Price's castle, and thus deduced that the monstrous Edward was still alive? (For Pete's sake, why not ask how come nobody ever used radar to triangulate the precise location of Santa's workshop?)

I swear to God, I'm not kidding. These questions were all raised in various reviews printed at the time, reviews that used these so-called logical holes—which are not logical holes at all, but necessary assumptions, akin to the fact that nobody recognizes Cinderella as the queen of the ball until Prince Charming shows up with that glass slipper—to claim that the movie made no sense. I recall one prominent critic for a major magazine, clearly old and experienced enough to know better, who complained at bitter length about the huge ice block the once-again exiled Edward carves into a sculpture at the movie's end, demanding to know: How did he get that ice? Who delivered it? Who brought it into the castle for Edward to carve? How come this is not explained to the very last detail? Why isn't this story annotated, diagrammed, highlighted and italicized for the benefit of the fable-impaired?

This is precisely the kind of thinking that Jerry Seinfeld spoofed on one episode of his sitcom, where he wonders out loud whether Edward Scissorhands is supposed to be some kind of superhero or something.

These people are not wrong. Logically, the story makes no sense. But fables are not nuts-and-bolts science fiction; they're dream-logic for the soul. Emotionally, Edward Scissorhands feels as real as its obvious precedent, Frankenstein. The film is an over-the-top but deeply heartfelt allegory about a creative genius, broken and kept apart by the very gifts that render him so special. Argue with the allegory or call it mawkish, but for those who allow themselves to fall under its spell, it is heartbreaking.