Labyrinth
Director: Jim Henson
Year Released: 1986
Rating: 2.0
A lonely teenager (Jennifer Connelly, beautiful at any age) conjures up a dream world in which the King of Goblins (David Bowie, sporting some memorably ... revealing tights) has taken her little brother captive inside a massive maze; with the help of a giant ogre, a cowardly elf and a rambunctious one-eyed fox, she does battle with puzzles and baddies in order to rescue her sibling. Despite the fantastic character and set design (I'm privy to the fox character, Didymus, who rides a fluffy white dog into battle), this is beset with too much tackiness (those Bowie songs are awful) and not nearly enough action or tension - as great as Henson was at constructing puppets with personality and making memorable TV shows, it's as if the feature-length was simply too much to pull off: this is more or less a string of creative moments and concepts instead of a fully-formed movie.
