Review of The Dark Crystal (1982) by Jacob R — 04 Dec 2010

Watching The Dark Crystal, one is constantly aware of the effort that went into making it. The story is imaginative, the puppetry is varied and impressive. It was clearly a labour of love, and it makes few concessions to those who aren't willing to get completely immersed in it, which ought to encourage you to do so.

But it doesn't work, and I don't like it.

To an extent I am biased. The creatures of The Dark Crystal are absolutely horrifying to behold, and seeing the movie as a child gave me nightmares - the wake-up-screaming variety. I'd normally argue that being scared is a valid part of the movie experience, and that nightmarish monsters are there simply to make the eventual hero's triumph more rewarding. But The Dark Crystal's balance is way off. The bad guys are terrifying. The good guys vary from boring to creepy, and their mission - and eventual victory - is all too vague to offset the feeling of unease generated by the rest of it.

And the story may be imaginative, but the script's a complete car crash. We open with awkward info-dumping narration - the kind you just know is only there to paper over the cracks, and isn't going to appear consistently throughout the film. The villainous Skeksis, the peaceful Mystics and our hero Jen, a Gelfling, are all introduced over about six minutes, without any dialogue. We find out way too much information, without the film going to the bother of having it come out naturally - it just unspools, courtesy of the narrator. Little of it makes sense. It's all rather existential, which marks it out even more as a film unsuitable for children. Big audience this film has got, then, being all about puppets from fantasy-land.

When Jen finally departs on his quest to, uh, something about a crystal shard, he spends quite a while talking to himself, even when there are other characters in the room. This might be an attempt to help us get to know him, but it doesn't work. How could it? The only way to make this guy interesting would be a brain transplant, followed by acting lessons, and even then it'd be worth pushing the lifeless little zombie off the nearest precipice and picking any other random character to replace him as the hero, just on the off chance.

(As if he's not bad enough, Jen eventually meets another Gelfling, Kira, whose shrill voice irritates almost as much as her magical animal-call, which is, at least, unintentionally hilarious. Need you ask, she's bloody boring too.).

The puppetry is, as stated above, impressive - but it varies a lot. Sometimes it boggles the mind, sometimes it's rubbish. The voice-acting is of a similar standard. The only thing that's consistent is the general repulsive look of it all.

Where The Dark Crystal fails, Labyrinth mostly improved. There were a band of genuinely amusing and likeable heroes to root for; the plot was simpler, and followed the structure of a fairytale; and while the villains could be scary, especially when lurking under the heroine's bed, they were also ever so slightly sympathetic, and often funny. Oh, and the heroine was human, which was a considerable improvement over the tedious lump of wood being shaken about by puppetteers here. These are relatively small changes, but they make Labyrinth a good movie.

The Dark Crystal, on the other hand, is a dismal, dreary and overbearingly dark creature feature, devoid of loveability or joy. If you like being creeped out, though, knock yourself out.