Sometimes in a world full of movies about CGI superheroes, drunken teenagers, and ass-kicking secret agents, you really just want to kick back with some wacky puppets, some David Bowie music, and one hell of a codpiece. 
Welcome to Labyrinth
This week I went to the movie showtimes section of my newspaper with the intent of going to see the new movie, Stardust. As much as I do very much want to see that movie, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, who I consider to be perhaps today’s definitive master of fantasy, I was sidetracked by a listing of a special showing going on in at the same theater. That would be the phrase “Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.”
My heart indeed skipped a beat when I saw this. With all due respect to Mr. Gaiman, Stardust will still be playing in theaters next week, but a special screening of a Jim Henson movie is not to be missed. I will say that I have long felt that the loss of Henson is one of the truest tragedies of the modern creative age, everything the man did was full of such odd twists and turns, taking things to levels of originality and imagination far outreaching the majority of his peers, and Labyrinth is a prime example of that.
I was apprehensive at first going in, almost even deciding to see Stardust instead, feeling that maybe it would be better to see something new than risk tarnishing the memory of a movie I had not seen in well over a decade. Well the call of muppets cannot be denied and so I ended up taking the risk and I’m glad I did. While the usage of synthesizers and the presence of a very-era David Bowie certainly date the movie, they don’t distract from the enjoyment of it, and I even remember why I had such a massive crush at one point on Jennifer Connelly.
I’m a big fan in general of the Muppets and Fraggle Rock, but what impresses me about Labyrinth and its predecessor, the Dark Crystal, is the ability to take the same level of imagination directed towards those worlds and channel them into an entirely different universe, with a magic all its own, a place where Kermit the Frog and crew would be entirely foreign concepts. Labyrinth creates a world where a glam rock idol rules over an army of goblins, goblins who use weapons which are made up of other goblins. A world where a giant Yeti monster controls summons rocks with his yell because they’re his friends, and where a noble fox with an eyepatch rides a dog into battle.
With all the above mentioned insanity, it seems like it would be hard to point out something that sums up what makes Labyrinth such an amazing piece of film. However, for me, it happens in a scene about midway through the movie. Hoggle, the cowardly little creature who leads heroine Sarah through various parts of the labyrinth is searching for her and is interrupted by Jareth the Goblin King, but first passes a piece of stone that is shaped like a face. As he moves past the face, we see that it is in fact three separate pieces that form one single image when seen directly in front of the camera. This face is probably visible on film for a matter of seconds, if that, and is then broken apart as the angle moves away from the rocks. Yet Henson and crew found this detail important enough to spend time cutting material, designing a set, and placing the rocks in exactly the right spot, hoping that at least one viewer would catch it.
I did.
Grade: A. (This may seem generous to some, but the movie was a commercial failure when it first opened so I’m giving one back to Jim’s team.)