New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

What exactly was so bad about Sarah’s life? As far as I could tell, her parents were indulgent and understanding. She had a room full of toys and all the time in the world to prance around the yard dressed like a character from Ivanhoe. Yet she is insolent, selfish, shrill and unrepentant about it all (it also doesn’t help that at this point in her career, Jennifer Connelly was an absolutely horrible actress). You can’t help but despise Sarah right off the bat and even as she is shown the error of her ways, you never get the idea that her actions are truly meant to benefit anybody but herself.

Jareth just comes across as a disturbing freak. The existence of his fantasy kingdom requires an acceptable suspension of disbelief, but we’re never told why he needs this baby, what happens after 13 hours or for that matter, why is it even 13 hours? Why not 14? Why not drop a shout out to Spinal Tap and make it 11? Without knowing any of this, the Goblin King’s bizarre, ritualistic behavior just makes him seem like some sort of pan-dimensional sex offender. It’s creepy, and I hate it. But hey, it’s a free country. If you find that entertaining, so be it.

Henson’s Muppets don’t help as much as you’d think. Muppets were hilarious when I was a kid. Now they’re kind of just ghoulish. Slightly realistic but clearly not, they’re like little fabric zombies. But I will admit that the craft of puppetry requires a highly skilled artist to successfully communicate emotion through an inanimate object. In this regard, Labyrinth is as successful as anything Henson ever attempted. His Muppets are at times eerily lifelike, and even when they’re not they lend themselves well to the film’s otherworldly atmosphere. Unfortunately there’s no story for the dolls to tell us, no credible hero for them to rally around. The unique look of this film could have been an asset, but instead its limitations are highlighted by a narrative far too primitive for puppets, let alone children. Labyrinth is pretty much just a bunch of vaguely unrelated things happening to boring characters who are guaranteed to win, despite the efforts of a villain who was never really dangerous to begin with.

Speaking of Bowie’s villain, I should stress that Labyrinth is also something of a musical. The Thin White Duke does his thing three or four times and at least one of the songs (a creepy ballad) is actually pretty good. For the most part the music feels like filler, the way it does every time Sarah runs into yet another talking doorknob or half-heartedly harmless booby trap. There are few better ways to kill a story than to make your protagonist unlikeable. But one of them is to make your bad guy an impotent, agenda-free cross dresser who sings bad songs and is responsible for chubby little faces on milk cartons all over town. Bowie does what he can, and what he does is very, very Bowie.

But alas, this movie has no heart, soul or spirit. If it takes an artist to make a puppet live and breathe, Labyrinth is a doll with no master. I realize it has a lot of fans, partly because of Jim Henson and what he meant to so many people both young and old. And that’s okay - just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean nobody else should. But it’s an acquired taste, and if you ask me, you’d do better to get your fix from a Pixie Stick Slurpee than from Labyrinth.

Continued:       1       2       3