Labyrinth

(Movie Review)

I was playing poker the other night with my co-workers, when someone suggested we put in a movie . After the usual debating of titles, the gang settled on this one. I was the only one who hadn't seen it before, but everyone else had fond memories of it as a child.

This is yet another movie from the 80s I remember seeing advertisements for as a child, but not being allowed to see at the time. (This is a children's movie, but rated PG which is a bit of a strange combination. We'll get to more of that below). For one reason or another I never bothered to catch up with it in the years since, but in college and beyond I met several people who were huge fans of this movie.

Although I know this movie has a large cult fan base among people of my generation, I think much of that is based on nostalgia. Which is hard for me, at the age of 29, to plug into. If I had seen this movie when I was 7, I'm sure it would have been a different story. And perhaps if I had seen this movie at 17, when I was just getting into classic rock and learning who David Bowie was, it might still have had a lot of appeal as a psychedelic rock film. But as it was, I'm afraid I found most of the film pretty stale and boring.

It's a pity because there's so much talent attached to this film: George Lucas, Jim Henson, Terry Jones of Monty Python as the screen writer, the drawing of MC Escher...(now that I'm no longer 17, I've decided I'm not a David Bowie fan, but you can't win them all).

And don't get me wrong, there are moments of genius in this film. A lot of the weird fantastic creatures are absolutely wonderful, and reminded me of why I liked the Muppet show so much as a child. And the general atmosphere of the film reminds me of "The Jim Henson Hour", (a short lived television that was on for a few months when I was in 5th grade) and so gets a couple nostalgia points from me there.

Unfortunately despite all the weird and wonderful Muppet creatures that populate this movie, the story is long, pointless and wandering. And, as usually happens with Muppet movies, the human actors really stink up the stage even though the puppets do a wonderful job.

The humor in this movie is really touch and go. Especially after all the recent children's movies by companies like Pixar which have sharp cutting humor that can also be enjoyed by adults, the humor in the Labyrinth doesn't hold up well by comparison. Typical example:
"If she kisses you,I'll make you a prince."
"You will?"
"Prince of the land of stink!"

A lot of the humor is also based purely on random strangeness, which has got to be the laziest kind of humor.

And yet, again, there are periodic moments of genius, where the old Monty Python influence seems to be coming through in Terry Jones. Like the scene where the Stone creatures are yelling out warnings of doom, and when they get told to shut up they become sensitive and reply that they are only doing their job.

The obvious comparison for a film like this is "Alice in Wonderland". Which was a children's film Disney released in 1951 and 20 years later, much to the Disney company's dismay, became known as a classic "Head" movie.

I think by the time "Labyrinth" came around, they were already anticipating that this film would be a hippy classic. Call me cynical, but I can't believe the people making this film never leaned over and said to each other something like, "Man, this is going to be such a good film to watch while high."

And this is the biggest problem with this movie. It doesn't have a clear idea of what it wants to be. Is this a children's movie with lovable puppets and messages about friendship? Is this a psychedelic rock musical with David Bowie? Is this just a weird trip? Mixing genres isn't a bad thing to do, but it's a dangerous thing to do if it's not pulled off right, and this movie doesn't pull it off right. Scenes from one part of the movie don't fit with scenes from another part.

And the Muppet urinating scene? What were they thinking?

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Labyrinth: Movie Review (Scripted)