Labyrinth (1986)

PG, mainly because this is a Jim Henson vehicle in 1986.  Honestly, we watched it with the kids.  There wasn't anything too upsetting.  It's messed up in the sense that the '80s as a whole were messed up.  There are creepy arms reaching for Sarah.  Some of the monsters can be a little upsetting.  A baby is in peril.  The biggest red flag?  Some of Bowie's outfits, which leave little room for the imagination.  Still, it's pretty tame.  It's not The Muppets, but it also doesn't really do anything to traumatize anyone too much.

DIRECTOR: Jim Henson

What I want to be doing is playing a video game.  I'm at that place where my hobbies are all vying for my attention, which is a pretty sweet place to be at in some regards, but also incredibly frustrating because my hobbies are starting to feel like jobs.  I told you guys that I was going to be watching this with my kids.  The seed was planted in my wife's head when we watched Idea Man and we just kind of followed through from there.  The biggest issue is that Labyrinth keeps on getting ironically watched by a lot of people, mainly for the really weird musical element of the movie (provided by David Bowie.)  While I don't necessarily always bond with Gen X over a lot of things, the one thing that we probably agree on is that you don't need to watch Labyrinth ironically.  I am in the camp that the movie holds up on its own.

I mean, it's not perfect.  While I think that Labyrinth may have wired me to have a youthful crush on Jennifer Connelly, her performance here is really weird.  She's an incredibly talented actress, but I think she falls into the category of people who don't really know how to act with puppets.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm always a little floored when people turn in amazing performances across from Muppets, so I can't fault her for not being the most on the ball with this.  Also, I gleaned from Idea Man that Henson himself was probably more wired to figure out the technical aspects of how to make a movie like Labyrinth work more than giving smart comments on how to help Connelly get through these scenes.  Also, I do have to say that Labyrinth might not be the best way to introduce kids to David Bowie.  I tried explaining to them that David Bowie might have been one of the coolest people to ever live and then they see "Dance, Magic, Dance" and I have an uphill battle in front of me.

I didn't remember how much Sarah is really unlikable at the beginning of the movie.  I mean, I get the formula.  The protagonist has to have done something wrong so that she can come out of the labyrinth a better person. We're all on the same page there, probably.  But this movie makes Sarah unlikable from moment one.  We don't really have a grip on why Sarah is being kind of a lot shy of the notion that teenagers tend to be slightly awful by their very makeup. But Sarah doesn't really have the arc of the film.  Really, Sarah instantly backpedals her evil when she realizes that she was playing wtih supernatural forces.  Immediately upon Jareth's arrival, Sarah tries to rectify her poorly worded wish.  From that moment on, Sarah steps into the role of hero. She doesn't really have challenges that address her selfishness.  She just keeps on making the moral choice.  It's not great for a movie, which is why we have Hoggle.

The only character to actually grow through this movie is Hoggle.  Sarah, as the hero, has a clear external conflict.  She has to get her brother back before the time runs out.  She's entirely focused on that external conflict.  But because Sarah treats Hoggle well, we start seeing his character ultimately become the dynamic force of the film.  He's a truly awful person.  Let's get that out of the way.  Part of it comes from the fact that he's terrifed of Jareth, which is reasonable.  But that almost just makes him slimy as opposed to sympathetic.  But we see that Jareth enjoys torturing Hoggle a bit throughout the movie.  There's a great scene in Doctor Who where Clara threatens to take the TARDIS away from the Doctor unless he helps her.  He gets the upper hand and forgives her anyway, saying something along the lines of "Do you think that our friendship means so little that it would affected by your betrayal?"  That's Sarah.  Sarah knows that Hoggle isn't a good person. But the great thing about Sarah is that she sees that Hoggle is struggling with morality throughout the piece.

But the one thing that I've kind of noticed about Jim Henson fantasy films (based almost entirely on Labyrinth  and The Dark Crystal) is that, for all of his world-building, he doesn't really explain a lot of what is going on in the movie.  Labyrinth is almost too straight-forward to really be considered a fully fleshed out film.  Again, I'm really a fan of this movie, especially after this watch of the movie.  But ultimately, Henson's entire plot is to point Sarah into a direction and have her run into a lot of characters along the way.  If I'm being intentionally rude and closed-minded about the whole thing, I suppose I can say the same thing about The Lord of the Rings.  The difference, however, between these two stories is that I'm never really lost on the motivation of characters in Lord of the Rings.  That's not true with Labyrinth.

Sarah is the first question.  The opening shot of the movie is an intentional mislead.  Sarah is following the owl who will be the avatar / animal form for Jareth at the beginning of the film.  She's dressed in a Renaissance Faire get up and speaking in all of these "thys" and "thines", making us thing that we're in medias res.  It's a fakeout and Sarah is actually reciting lines from a book (play?) called The Labyrinth.  We're not really sure why she's doing this.  My real takeaway is that she's just a big nerd for this book and she's LARPing by herself, but that's a bit of a stretch.  This play, by the way, is the way she beats Jareth in the climax, so having this section being woefully underexplained really does hurt the movie a bit. 

The second character question I have is Jareth himself.  Jareth's moral code is really undefined.  All characters have rules to how they work.  There are things that they consider sacred, even if that sacred choice would be morally dubious by any objective standard.  Jareth and the goblins wait for Sarah to say the phrase that would allow him to steal the child.  When she immediately demands Toby's return, Jareth presents her with a challenge.  If she can get to the center of the labyrinth before the expiration of the clock, she gets Toby back.  However, if she fails, he gets to keep her in the labyrinth.  He's definitely playing it like a sport.  He enjoys the challenge.  It's very Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Toymaker.  (Sorry for the multiple Doctor Who references.)   But Sarah proves herself to be more resourcesful than the inhabitants of the labyrinth and she makes her way to the castle.  But Jareth then starts actively cheating.  He unabashedly cheats.  

And the kind of cheating he does doesn't really provide a narrative about character.  Jareth gives Hopple a magic peach that would have Sarah forget about Toby and her quest to get him back.  Now, it's not like there's a moral component to accepting a peach from a friend.  There's no message or warning to her that she should not eat this peach.  I mean, if we're going for the Eve and the Tree of Knowledge comparison, Eve at least knew that it was wrong to eat from the Tree.  Sarah's just had a long day and Hopple offers her fruit.  That's a completely morally neutral choice.  Thank goodness that Sarah's become shrewd enough that her subconscious fights against the effects of the fruit.  But really, there's nothing all that moral about her overcoming the peach. She doesn't really grow.  If anything, the labyrinth helps her return to her singular focus.  But this is just a weird Jareth plot where he enjoys torturing Hopple as much as he enjoys beating Sarah.  I would get if Jareth was the kind of guy who delighted in an opponent's incompetence.  But the cheating doesn't seem to be in line with the guy who offered her a chance to get Toby back.

Anyway, the movie actually kind of holds up.  It's not perfect.  You have to be incredibly forgiving of some stuff. But visually, the movie is incredible.  If Henson takes ten swings at completely changing the way you look at cinema, he only really fails once in there.  Most of the effects are insane.  The creature shop absolutely crushes it in this movie and, despite having a simple plot, it is a spectacularly watchable movie.