LABYRINTH (1986)

LABYRINTH (1986)

Tagline: Where anything is possible.

(Fantasy, Adventure, Kidnapping) [PG]

So, had enough, eh? All right then, throw down your weapons, and I'll see that you're well-treated.

In this one, Sarah is told she needs to babysit her baby brother. However, she is a selfish brat and decides to wish him away. As it turns out the Goblin King has a thing for Sarah but refuses to give her brother Toby back unless she can make it to his castle by midnight. If she fails, Toby becomes a goblin. In her way is a giant labyrinth full of danger, hope, and friends, but can they get to the castle in time. 

Okay, first off, if you really want to go for it, you can pick this thing to pieces if it occurred in the real world. First off the Goblin King “Jareth”, is played by 39-year-old David Bowie and the chick he really wants to have by his side is 16-year-old Sarah played by 16-year-old Jennifer Connelly. In the fantasy world, that’s probably fine, but it’s pretty weird looking at this as a 13-year-old when I first saw this movie in theaters. The other issue is that Sarah is losing her mind over being asked to babysit? Bloody hell. Pretty sure that’s a normal everyday occurrence these days. Heck, even I had to watch my younger brother when I was a kid and I never thought…” let’s just see if I can find a freakin goblin on a Friday night, to take him away.” So yeah, yeah, I get all that. If you take this thing into the real world, it gets pretty janky pretty fast. However, it’s NOT the real world. This is a fantasy movie so at least those two items aren’t issues. 

What I do wish is that some of the lyrics for the songs weren’t so weird. “Magic Dance” for instance has kids singing “Slap that baby, make him free”, essentially promoting that you just smack a baby and that this one, in particular, had the power of voodoo? What the actual heck does that have anything to do with this fantasy world Jim Henson and George Lucas are introducing us to? I get that these are goblins singing, but what the crap.
 

Where this movie succeeds is in the casting. In spite of David Bowie’s many weird personal on-goings, the dude killed this role. Jennifer Connelly (TOP GUN: MAVERICK) was also spectacular, so casting wise this was fantastic. I also didn’t know that the voice for Hoggle (a really ugly manly-looking creation) was actually actress Shari Weiser. The pacing is off for some of this film with the middle dragging quite a bit but the overall creative endeavor is out of control awesome. One thing I remember distinctly about this movie is that my brother for some reason saw it before I did. He loved this thing and was totally amazed by the fact that it seems like everything in the movie was “alive”. He was 11 at the time, so I can vouch for the fact that in spite of some very weird ideas this is a kid’s movie. You just have to have kids that aren’t stupid enough to try stealing babies or slapping them. 

Design-wise this one kind of lost me on a few characters like Hoggle, but I thought designs for characters like Ludo and Didymus who reminded me a LOT of Reepicheep from THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE were pretty great. The soundtrack is definitely one of the better kids' movie soundtracks ever done, but there really isn’t an excuse for some of the bizarre lyrics.

Overall as much as I know this is a classic and a favorite among many, I really don’t like this one as much as others did. I see some of the weirdness and thought it was just a bit too much in some areas. Having said that, there was a good bit of whimsical humor, and the over-playful approach I thought was better than going full-dark. For those reasons I give this one a 4 out of 7, a few obvious changes would have really helped this one. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE JIM HENSON COMPANY AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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