Labyrinth

Jim Henson, USA/UK, 1986, 101 minutes

Come and release your inner eight-year old! Have you ever wondered what happens when a mullet goes pro under the sharp tutelage of a 80s stylist armed with electric blue hair mascara? Find out in Labyrinth. Now, onto the plot...

Spoilt Sarah (a very young Jennifer Connelly) is a girl smitten with dreams of other worlds. Her bedroom is populated by stuffed unicorns and dragons, and her fantasies are full of princes and princesses. One night, angered by her baby brother’s incessant yawping, she prays to the goblin King to steal him away and so he does! Enter Captain Tight-Pants himself, the mullet-sporting, glass-ball-twirling David Bowie. Sarah has thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth, an infinitely complex maze surrounding the goblin citadel, and rescue her brother, or he will be trapped there forever...

Labyrinth is a defining film for the youth of the 1970s and 1980s. Replete with contact juggling from “Mr. Ziggy Stardust” himself (or at least his hand double) and so zany that you can’t swing a goblin without knocking over a cast of elaborate muppets, this film is so good that it quite honestly shaped my recurring dreams for over two years.

Review by Max Schreck Jr.
Taken from EUFS Programme Spring 2004