Review of Labyrinth (2012) by Jessica B — 09 Dec 2013

When I went into this I was kind of expecting something like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, at least that's what I was told to expect. Although, since it came from George Lucas, I couldn't expect it to be like that in hind sight.

That became apparent to me as soon as the opening credits started rolling. The song's too simple and blandish for my taste, too easy to ignore, so that's definitely not like Rocky Horror. No biggie, I just got mislead, that's not the movie's fault.

So I had to disregard that immediately. What I got instead was whiny Jennifer Connelly, and I have to say I'm not a fan. She always seems to be in permanent whine mode. Not a good way to start a movie: being disappointed in the tone of the film, then immediately being annoyed by the leading lady.

I'm sorry, but I don't like it when teenagers are written this way at all. They are not all just whining brats who never listen to their parents and constantly make stupid mistakes because they don't think things through.

I'm not saying teenagers don't make mistakes, but so does everybody else, and besides it's not like every teenager on the planet isn't bright enough to think about their actions and words before they act.

If that was the case, then every teenager would end up dead, pregnant, or worse by the time they were eighteen! So no, not every teenager needs to be written this way: self-absorbed, dramatic, and angry.

Those are called spoiled brats; do they have to be in every film? Can't we get at least one that, even though they make mistakes, are at least nice to their parents and obey them like most normal teenagers do, and actually makes an effort to figure out what to do before just blindly jumping in? Couldn't she have been more than the angsty teenager who's constantly been misunderstood? I know teenagers feel like that sometimes, but that's not all of someone's personality.

Think back to the time when you were that age, were you like that all the time? Were you constantly whining that the world wasn't fair? Were you constantly fighting with your parents for no reason? No, you had your happy moments, your sad moments, your angry moments just like everyone else! You listened to your parents 90% of the time and tried to be a good person.

Sure you had your angst tantrums every now and again, but not constantly! So why can't movie teenagers (outside of animated films) act that way: human? Oh, and if the angst isn't annoying, then the dungeons and dragons aspect of her personality is waaaaay creepy.

Watch an episode of Deadly Women focusing on teenagers and you'll get what I mean. She's got all the makings of a teenage psycho killer going on. The angst, anger, doesn't get along with her parents, dramatic, and into the fantasy worlds where she pretends to be someone else.

She's just got an unhinged feeling about her. I feared for the baby's life when the parents left in the beginning. She was acting so erratic (she whined about wanting to be taken from 'this horrible place', but what was so bad about it? Nothing was shown to make it look bad, so how in the world was the audience supposed to identify with her? Unless they wanted us to hate her, in which case mission accomplished) I actually thought she might take a knife to the kid's throat or something! In fact, I thought that was seriously going to be the end of the movie; that she'd wake up covered in blood, with her dead brother in his crib and a knife in her hand, and realize that throughout her entire deluded state, she'd been killing him the entire time.

Even when she's trying to act nice it doesn't come off that way. The way she stares so vacantly toward the camera just made me feel like she didn't believe anything of what she said. It's sort of like a psychopath gaining your trust before killing you.

Smiling while they slide in the knife; so I never believed for a second she was being sincere. Not good for one of your main cast! So long story short (too late) I didn't care for Connelly's character.

What else about the film? The effects are decent (kinda wonky at points, but decent). David Bowie is a lot of fun, if only for his antics and outfits. He at least looks like he's having fun, so I had fun whenever he was on screen.

Although, wasn't he supposed to be in love with her? I admit, that would be adding another level of creepy to everything, but didn't she say that the Goblin King was supposed to be in love with her? He sure never acted like it to me! Ok, to be fair that dream/hallucination thing that happens toward the end of the movie sort of shows that, but he mostly just stalks her and seems to scare the crap out of her for the most part.

I mean, he just stares at her so eerily, it makes me shudder just thinking about it. It wasn't a look of intense love, it was more of a...well a rape face. His song was right the hell out of nowhere, but he's got a great voice! If he wasn't singing, then I didn't really care for it, since he seemed to be the only one who cared about what he was singing.

For some reason I can't help but like it when he talks. The labyrinth itself is a lot of fun too, except for that swamp; did I really need to hear all those fart sounds? Not very funny, at least to me.

The helping hands were really cool. I wouldn't have any real problems with the movie if it wasn't for Connelly's character. I just couldn't make myself care if she completed the maze or not.

In fact, I was rooting for her to die half the time, and that's not good at all. And going with the thought that this was all a terrible hallucination of her psychopathic mind, what if instead of just partying it up with everyone at the end, she was thrown into a mental asylum for the criminally insane? I don't know, it just seems to make more sense to me, going from the way she acted during the movie.

David Bowie was the most interesting part of it besides the labyrinth itself, but other than that, I don't think it's enough to watch again.