There is no one single scene you can pluck out of The Princess Bride to prove to someone who has never seen it that it is a classic movie, worthy of their complete adoration. The lines are frequently cheesy, and they’re often poorly delivered; the cinematography is uninspired, and the effects feel cheap.

Explaining the story won’t help you either. At its best it seems derivative, and at worst its a series of poorly connected childish vignettes about pirates, revenge, and True Love.

Even the title is a bit rubbish. Is it The Prince’s Bride? No? Is that meant to be a play on words then? Is this a movie for girls?

By all rights The Princess Bride should be the kind of movie that only small children enjoy because they don’t know that there’s anything better out there.

But somehow it’s so much more than that. Somehow, in watching it, we become children again. We forget that there is anything more than this simple, fantastical, wonderful world of giants and pirates and miracle workers.

It starts working its spell from the very first shot of the film, a closeup on a television with a baseball video game being played in glorious eight bit detail. Then we see a child holding a controller with a slack look on his face, controlling the men on the screen as they play their game. He’s sick, yes, but more importantly he’s bored. He has the best that technology and entertainment can offer in front of him and it can’t budge him out of his ennui.

But then, in comes grandpa. And he’s carrying the most outmoded, old-fashioned kind of entertainment imaginable: a book.

The child rolls his eyes; certainly he will be bored by this too. But after some convincing he decides, at the very least, it can’t hurt to listen.

And then the story begins. At first the child is still hesitant, criticizing elements that do not suit his taste. He thinks he has seen it all. He thinks he has life figured out. He thinks things like True Love are silly. But gradually his walls of cynicism are broken down and he’s fully invested in this outlandish tale of good and evil and True Love.

And he is us.

It’s important to note that the movie doesn’t treat the child as a problem to be solved. Rather he is a patient in need of treatment. He is sick, and in desperate need of healing.

Of course he hasn’t seen everything. Of course he is still capable of wonder. Of course he can still believe in the impossible. He’s just a child.

And so are we when we watch The Princess Bride. It is a film that has nothing new to offer. It breaks no new ground. Indeed some of the story makes very little sense on closer analysis. But it doesn’t matter. Because it breaks down the walls of our cynicism. It takes us back to a place of innocence.

No matter how many times our hearts have been broken we can still believe in True Love. No matter how much evil we see in the world we can still trust that good will prevail. No matter how many times we hear the same old stories they can still thrill our hearts. If only we are willing to let them.

Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw .

To hear more of our thoughts on The Princess Bride check out Episode 189 of the Human Echoes Podcast.