Scooter Chronicles

What do you know?! Two movies in a weekend. It is amazing what you can accomplish with your Netflix back-catalog when you have a 6 month old that is happy and content (for the most part). Yesterday afternoon, Marcia (for about the first half of the movie) and I watched “Labyrinth” starring a very young Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.

Now seriously, I had not never seen this movie. It is 20 years old, and now that I have seen it can say, best suited for kids of most ages (probably 7-8 years and up).

Jennifer Connelly (she was 15 years old when they filmed the movie) plays Sarah, a girl who has her head in the clouds with fantastical stories, mostly that of a small book called “The Labyrinth”. She is asked quite often by her step-mother to stay at home and watch her baby brother Toby, and is getting frustrated with that. So this latest evening of her father and step-mother going out, Toby is crying uncontrollably, and Sarah utters a magical wish that the goblins would come and take him. The Goblin King Jareth (Bowie) shows up and does just that. But Sarah swears that she didn’t mean it, yet Jareth won’t relent. So he gives her a challenge: to make it through the labyrinth which leads to his castle. If she can do it in 13 hours, then he will give Toby back to her.

To give you a further idea of what the movie was like, half of Bowie’s scenes turn into musical numbers. Cheesy 80’s sounding pop and written by Bowie. The biggest clue to what the movie was like is the production company. Jim Henson Productions. So as the movie goes, Sarah comes across many characters that she befriends to help her, which are all muppets or furry creatures of some sort.

It was not what I expected. I remember seeing the trailers, or at least teasers about the movie and thought it was darker and more mature. Though 20 years can warp ones memory. And honestly, it was a bit disappointing to see that it was a kids’ movie. However, it was still a good production, and taught good values. One of the characters that Sarah befriends is a goblin named Hoggle, who fights his conscience between helping Sarah and his fear of what Jareth will do to him if he in fact does help her. Sarah also has to deal with inner issues in getting to the castle and saving Toby, and also comes to a grand realization about Jareth at the end of the movie.

If nothing else, it was entertaining. And I would not have a problem watching this with Nigel. Actually, I think this is a great movie for kids that like fantastical stories. Maybe someday I will watch it again with Nigel.