It has been suggested to me that my personal aversion to fantasy films overwhelms my earlier review of Labyrinth, even negating whatever worth it may have.  I cannot argue that point; it is clear and obviously true.  In my reviews I have striven to provide my own personal context regarding my feelings of fantasy both to help readers to understand that my feelings do not mean that the film in question is necessarily of poor quality, given a bad rating; and to describe more about myself.  The more one knows about a critic the more one can relate to him or her — or dismiss them entirely.  But, as my friend pointed out so eloquently, that is not quite fair to the film in question.  So here is what I hope will be a more straightforward review of Labyrinth:

 

Jim Henson’s fantasy film, initially released in 1986, made a recent return to theaters through Fathom Events, and I watched it for the first time ever.  It follows teenager Sarah (Jennifer Connelly, in only her fourth film) through the title maze in order to rescue her baby brother Toby from the Goblin King.  Sarah has just thirteen hours (goblin time, which runs faster than human time) to get Toby back or she will lose him forever.  She is responsible for him, since his incessant crying prompted her to ask the Goblin King to take him away in the first place, and the journey to retrieve him is much more difficult than she expects.  Just why the Goblin King (David Bowie) wants him is unclear, except that Toby seems to behave better with him than he does with his older sister.  The moral of the story seems to be to not do something drastic in the first place because it will be much harder to undo later.

The labyrinthine world of the goblins and other creatures is dark and creepy and grotesque, just as one would imagine, with walls and floors of stone, hidden passages, double-hinged doors with odd-shaped and talkative knockers, aged brush never cleared away, deadly traps and oubliettes, magical creatures and, most notably, a bog with a horrible smell.  Sarah and her new friends Hoggle (an ancient dwarf), Ludo (a giant furry beast) and Sir Didymus (a fox knight who rides a sheepdog named Ambrosius) gradually make their way past guards and traps and other obstacles to reach the Goblin City where Sarah can rescue Toby.  This occurs in a room designed by M. C. Escher, with stairways on the walls and ceilings leading to nowhere.  The design is intricate and interesting, providing a solid basis for the weird adventure to progress through.

But the story is for the birds.  Sarah may be a typical teenager but her imagination is entirely too vivid — and bizarre.  The odd characters come and go, and change their minds for almost no reasons at all.  Each decides to help Sarah — against the Goblin King’s wishes — simply because she calls them her friend; is there no friendship in goblin land?  What have these creatures been doing for all the years that they have presumably been there?  It makes no sense.  Then there is the Goblin King himself, in the form of spectacularly cosmic David Bowie.  Bowie wrote five rather blah songs for the feature in the homogenous 1980s synthesizer style; I was unimpressed by any of them, although “As the World Falls Down” plays like a music video of the era.  Bowie has presence when finger-juggling crystal balls or tossing Toby high into the air for fun but his costume pants are too tight and he seems to me far too adult to exist within this more children-oriented universe.

Very little of this fantasy world makes sense to me, nor did I find it fun or appealing.  Sarah finds herself in peril almost constantly and the final sequence which destroys much of the Goblin City is ludicrous, even though much of it is played for comic effect.  The only thing I found even remotely funny were the references to the Bog of Eternal Stench, and the reactions of those that had to cross it so carefully.  The ending reminded me of that of Wisdom (also 1986), which is not a good thing in any form.  Sarah herself may have found this adventure a mystical, even magical, experience, but I do not.  I confess I do not understand its cultish appeal.  ☆ 1/2.  10 March 2024.