Labyrinth (1986)

Fantasy adventure directed by Jim Henson, recycling story elements from Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and adding in a bunch of grotesque Muppets. David Bowie is the goblin king Jareth (why Jareth, of all names?), while Jennifer Connelly plays a teenage girl on a quest to save her baby brother imprisoned in a castle within a maze. In doing so, she throws off the trappings of childhood and embraces adult responsibilities. 

The sets are often inspired – in particular, the camera trickery that brings to life a series of impossible Escher-like staircases – and some of the puppets are highly inventive. But the aesthetics are ugly and parts of the plot seem stilted or disjointed. It’s less than a sum of its parts. The script went through multiple rewrites and it’s fascinating to see glimpses of plot threads that were either cut or left undeveloped. 

Bowie seems uncomfortably miscast, lost in the labyrinth of his mid-1980s career. Even when he gets to sing, he’s performing some of his weakest material – so Labyrinth doesn’t work as a musical either. He should have been more extreme – nastier and funnier, hamming it up like a pantomime villain. Instead, it’s an oddly tepid performance. 

Beyond those points it’s difficult to say why it ends up being a bit of an awkward mess – albeit an enjoyable mess. Indeed, it’s nearly brilliant, but the difference between nearly brilliant and actually brilliant turns out to be a huge one.