LABYRINTH

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Because of: mild innuendo, crude humor

Rated:

Be careful what you wish for. It just might come true. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is about to learn just how horrible angry words can be. She returns home to baby sit her little brother one evening in a bad temper and wishes he would be taken away by goblins. Wrapped up in a fantasy world all of her own making, Sarah doesn't realize goblins are real and more than happy to remove little Tobey from his crib. In the midst of a storm she discovers her baby brother is missing -- and the Goblin King, Jareth (David Bowe), has come to offer her one last chance to recover him. She may choose to accept one of his crystals, which will make all her dreams come true, or she can pursue her brother through the labyrinth surrounding his castle. 

Sarah chooses to redeem her mistake and risk the labyrinth, despite warnings that nothing is ever what it seems. She has thirteen hours to reach the center and claim the child before he is transformed into a goblin. Along the way her adventures will forge into the imaginations of Jim Henson and George Lucas, and encounter many strange and paranormal creatures. But it is all leading her to the ultimate confrontation... with Jareth himself, whose own motives may be vastly different than she first envisioned.

From the opening credits where a white owl ( Jareth in animal form) flutters against the starlight, to the ultimate showdown in Jareth's strange and wonderful castle, Labyrinth is a wonderfully imaginative adventure with psychological twists and excellent puppetry. If you pay attention in the opening scenes you'll understand that Sarah lives in a fantasy world. Her mother is an actress (her co-star looks suspiciously like Jareth) and her daughter wants to shut herself away from an ugly divorce. She chooses fairy tales -- her room is full of stuffed animals with fairy tale names, her dog is named Merlin, and her favorite book is merely titled Labyrinth. Many of the images you'll see later in the film originate in Sarah's room... stuffed animals, book covers, drawings, and figurines. By the end, has she dreamed everything? Was it all an illusion or did it really happen? 

Whatever the conclusion one draws, Sarah has gone through a growing-up experience. She's learned life ISN'T fair. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. And things are never what they appear -- riddles can be solved, hideous creatures may often have the softest of hearts, and even the motives of the villain are different than anticipated. Jareth isn't just your ordinary single-dimensional bad guy. Since it is a Jim Henson production, I wasn't too leery about renting it sight unseen, and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome... also disappointed that I hadn't rented it years ago! Yes, it's full of Muppets, but it's a story adults will enjoy as well as children.

Though some of the effects are dated, the puppet masters are at the top of their game. There's also a fantastic stage magician who provides Jareth's slight of hand with mind-boggling ease by playing with crystals. They balance on one finger, roll with fluid motions of the hand, and rotate in his fingers with numerous other crystals. It's hard to describe -- you'll have to see it to understand. But it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen! The acting is quite good. Jennifer Connolly's spirited fifteen year old plays off David Bowie's Jareth with intelligence and slight romantic tension. The rock singer is actually a tolerable actor and provides most of the musical element in the story. (It's half a musical, half fantasy, and a little bit of mind-manipulation.) Audiences might have fun knowing little Tobey is actually the producer's firstborn son. When they were drawing the conceptual art for the film's premise, they drew a blue-eyed, blonde baby boy in candy-stripe pajamas. His blond, blue-eyed son Tobey was born several months later. 

There are a few flaws in the film due to the plot. Throwing Sarah into the labyrinth provides a lot of wonderful adventures but very little actual storyline. The writer didn't know where he was going on these scenes and basically just took creature drawings he liked and created around them. Personally I didn't mind -- for the most part I enjoyed almost everything. (Except for those stupid forest animals with their inter-changeable heads...) Labyrinth is a top-notch fairy tale. It doesn't involve a lot of magical elements and isn't overly scary. Since Jim Henson directed it's fairly family-friendly and borders on the comic side rather than the darker aspects of Jareth and his Kingdom.

The only things I would mention would be some mild profanity ("Hell" pops up in a song, there are one or two mild abuses of deity, and "d*mn" is uttered a few times), and two mild content concerns. Sarah meets her friend Hoggles -- some kind of a little person/creature in the maze -- when he's urinating into a nearby fountain. It's more of a roll-your-eyes moment than anything overt. The second is Jareth's pants. "Tight" would be an understatement, not to mention "distracting." I know he's a rock star, but please! The Bog makes flatulent sounds. But these minor flaws aren't worth skipping the film over. All in all, a wonderful world which will make you long for adventure and desire your own travels through the Labyrinth.