Labyrinth

I never saw this as a kid, so I hold no nostalgic value for this movie. And I’m sorry to inform all of you that this movie is not good. Your rose colored nostalgia glasses blind you to this movie’s painful flaws. To start, the acting is BAD. Jennifer Connelly is young, so I don’t expect the same quality of acting that she gave in something like House of Sand and Fog. But YIKES, she is BAD here. Yelling her lines, over-emoting or under-emoting at random ... it’s hard to get through, and hard to embrace in a main character. David Bowie is playing David Bowie. He’s not even trying to be anything but himself, which, for a non-regular actor, okay, fine. It just doesn’t help. He never feels evil. He just feels ... there. While I will say the muppet work is fun, the sets? What the shit happened? Did they spend all their money on the muppets and Bowie and have to borrow sets from a middle school play? It is BAD. And because the script gets into the titular maze right away, it has to manufacture a LOT of obstacles, and they never feel as high stakes as the movie wants you to think. That is, when the script can be arsed to actually move forward. It diverts to pick up muppet friends for Connelly to traverse with, making this feel sometimes like a Wizard of Oz clone. Or wastes time with musical numbers that don’t advance the plot. And then there’s the ending, which is a 100% plagiarism of A Nightmare On Elm Street. For kids, I can see why this is a fun fantasy movie. For those who grew up with it, I can see why nostalgia holds. But I’m viewing this for the first time as an adult, and all I see is a heavily flawed slog. It’s not outright bad. Just not good.