Labyrinth (1986)

If you ask me I will always tell you that I love films because imagination can take the place of logic and that should be perfectly acceptable. Often times I will like a film simply because it pushes the boundaries of film making instead of focusing on being a "good" movie. I suppose that if I shut off the nagging part of my brain that screams about the ridiculousness of the whole premise then I can see how I might actually have enjoyed "Labyrinth". At the moment, however, the nagging is simply too loud to be ignored.

Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a 15-year-old coping with the death of her mother and the remarriage of her father. She plays make-believe and her bedroom is a trove of stuffed animals and bedtime stories. I might have found her to be a rather disturbing girl if she weren't so pretty and didn't enunciate so heavily like a stage actress. Forced to babysit for her crabby infant brother, Toby, she summons the goblins from a fairy tale to come and take the boy away. When Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie) actually does come and takes the baby, Sarah heads out to get her brother back.

Transported to a magical land somewhere in Britain I assume (considering the accents, the bad teeth and the rolling hills) Sarah must reach Jareth's castle within 13 hours, lest her brother be turned into a goblin himself. It's a simple setup for an adventure film in which Sarah faces many challenges navigating the mystical maze surrounding the castle, making friends and enemies along the way and discovering things about herself in the process.

This is a Jim Henson production and therefore it can be expected to have amazing puppetry, great sets and fun musical numbers, all of which is true. I was talking about imagination earlier, and this has no shortcomings in that department--at least outside of the script. There are lots of clever locations and sight gags used, not to mention several awesome songs by Bowie. He is really the prime reason for seeing the film. Who wouldn't be interested in a transvestite, pedophilic vampire who contact juggles?

I tried not to care about the plot really hard, but it's impossible when it's confusing and completely arbitrary. Was the whole adventure a dream? If so, Sarah thinks an awful lot of herself. If not, Jareth needs to learn how to pick up girls. Why did Jareth give her a time limit anyway? And if he is so powerful why not just send her back to the beginning of the labyrinth himself? Does it make logical sense that she would spend hours fighting Jareth's minions and then simply choose to be his lover? It doesn't work and it made me angry.

I did enjoy the messages of a troubled teen having to come to terms with adolescence, but that went by the wayside in the very last scene. In the end, though, this film is for children who aren't going to notice the idiocies of the whole thing. There is always something going on, it's occasionally funny and the messages about friendship and insecurity are easily identifiable. I would guess that this is the type of film which would garner cult status from people my age, but as this was the first time I saw it there was none of the childhood nostalgia to keep me from seeing that although it's brightly colored and has Bowie in tights, the whole premise is a bit too thin.

2/4