L
Labyrinth – Not the fun Bowie film that you’d expect. Sure, there he is in his full mischievous glory in a role he was born to play, a goblin king. Jennifer Connelly, cute as a button, has a hissy fit against her little step-brother, commanding the goblins to take the baby way (in a sly wink to Maurice Sendak’s book of the same subject, and paying tribute to his clear influence on the spirit of the film, there’s a copy of one of his books displayed prominently in the child’s bedroom); when her wish comes true (against her wishes), she goes on a quest to recover him, making friends and enemies along the way among Jim Henson’s puppet army. Too bad the plot is nonsense, and only a few scenes work. The musical numbers, of course, are horrible, and her grump and traitorous (but, of course, with a good heart in the end) little sidekick Hoggle is even more annoying than Dobby. At least the Fire gang, with their weird head-swapping abilities, are a nice touch. The living Escher painting (the stairs of relativity) is pretty cool, though, I must admit. So it’s not like the film has nothing going for it… in fact its creepy weirdness is sort of endearing in a strange way.
In this vein, Ridley Scott’s Legend is a bit better, but not by much (at least it is so highly stylized that you can forgive its many periods of wankiness), but neither is as good as Pan’s Labyrinth.