flyingamon

It's from Jim Henson and it was released 4 years after masterpiece The Dark Crystal. Even with a very different story comparisons between the two movies are inevitably going to be made. The story in Dark Crystal is more elaborate, you get more background information about the characters and the races etc. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy Labyrinth, on the contrary but this movie would never be able to beat the Dark Crystal in my opinion. Labyrinth is more light hearted where Dark Crystal had a more serious and dark tone. I particularly liked the part of Didymus being small he thought he could take on a huge army. he did remind me of Reeperjeep from Narnia. Than there was Udo the big hairy monster who was actually fuzzy and adorable. And not to forget Hoggle the grumpy but helpful dwarf who did care more about Sara than he wanted to admit (reminded me of Grumpy in his relationship with Snow White). Labyrinth does have human actors and not only dolls and puppets like in Dark Crystal however the human actors stay limited to Sara, the goblin king and little Toby. Sara played by Jennifer Connolly played this part well. She was first a childlike teenager on the verge of becoming a young woman still being attached to her dolls (materialistic) and fleeing into her favorite fairy tales. After her journey she learned an important lesson. I think that was shown well. Another human part that was executed amazingly was that of the goblin King played by David Bowie. Bowie is a singer and not an actor and it shows when he is singing a song, you can see the performer in him and how he tries to put the attention on him. Although not cruel he is threatening and evil and yes Bowie did this well for a non-actor. His walking on the ceiling part amazed me as a kid, I still love that today.

I always thought that mixing fairy tales with our daily life would make for a bad and cliché movie that only romantic comedy lovers would appreciate. I have no problem with this genre but often they tend to be boring, predictable and uninspired. This movie had indeed its overly cute stuff but that doesn't get annoying at all as it has so many funny moments that you can't find anything to complain about (at least I didn't). I thought setting the fairy tale world of Andalasia up as an animation and having its inhabitants to be real humans when they are in New York was a fantastic idea and I can't think of other movies who do such a good job at that. You will recognize references to other fairy tales such as Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. However this story and its characters is standing very strong on his own. It's not the typical fairy tale where you know who is going to end up with who. It is something completely new. This movie is definitely worth a lot of re-watches.

This was a dark fantasy movie, I think that is the best way to describe it. The movie is based on a series of books (which I haven't read) so that's why I feel that a lot of things are left unexplained and that the movie feels pretty rushed. I would have preferred that the movie was a bit longer and provided us more background about its sub-characters such as Uncle Monty and aunt Josephine. Josephine is played by Meryl Streep who executes the part as the panicking and ever seeing accidents happening aunt marvelously. That Jim Carey plays the evil Count Olav might be a surprise since he is always type-casted as a comedy character. He does play this part well and adds humor to it, which is good. However he might not have been the best choice for this role. The children are the main center of the movie and do this well. Little Sunny was adorable as the biting toddler. Violet was pretty, smart and elegant (loved the way she dressed) and I was happy to see Emily Browning (also great in Ghost Ship) doing this role. And Klaus showed that reading and thus inheriting knowledge is pretty handy when being in danger. Intelligence doesn't make you boring at all. The story is although dark very compelling but as said before rushed. Maybe a mini series or one movie per book had been better.