It has some great visuals and puppetry, the story is simple. You could say it is a rendition of Alice in wonderland or the wizard of Oz. I just find the premise a bit too straight forward, maybe I would have liked it if I watched it as a child opposed to watching it yesterday as a 35 y old man.
shareYeeaah, I don't think it was made for 35 year old men, haha. As a 35 year old man, you can see why a child would love it?
shareYes because I remember liking Alice in wonderland when I was a child and that movie is not strong on plot either. When you're a kid all you want is colorful visuals a colorful bad guy and colorful good guys or girls. Labyrinth has some pretty great visuals and yes you can tell a lot of it is fake sets and muppets buy a kid would like it.
shareWell, the movie is pretty much a 'slightly charming failure'. The musics are pretty awful for 1980s movie, everything is dark, colorless, bland, grey, brown, etc. Not nice bright colors anywhere.
The lead actors are ridiculous. I mean, the woman is OK, but a bit 'meh' - I don't see why anyone would think she's anything special. Her facial features are so basic and common, too, and her acting ability.. well, it doesn't make you admire her skillz.
"Mr. Bulge".. I mean, The Goblin King - how ridiculous is his character? Is he good? Is he evil? He seems to fluctuate and eventually, settles on 'impotent'.
The most impressive thing about this movie is the owl animation in the beginning, especially considering the year.
I saw this movie in a peculiar order; I actually played the GAME, first. The game seemed fantastical and interesting, but suffered from bad gameplay, and it starts so boringly I almost never saw much of it (pure text for a long time).
There are similarities, but to me, the game is a better experience. It doesn't have annoying baby screaming, it doesn't have a bratlike character (she is so annoying in the beginning), or david bowie's big, bad bulge to scar you for life.
It even seems more imaginative - it at least provokes your imagination a bit more. In the movie, everything is 'served on a silver platter', so your own imagination does not get engaged.
All in all, this movie feels a bit unnecessary. There is no sense of epic adventure, nothing much is resolved in the end, a girl grows up from spoiled child to a bratty teenager, that STILL isn't able to abandon her childish ways (would've been more poignant and meaningful if she HAD been able to say goodbye to the goblin people and all that, instead of the cop-out we see).
There's really not much this movie offers to the viewer, except tired, clichéic puzzles from when the world was young, questionable charm of David Bowie's struggle between his big upstairs and downstairs visuals..
.. and your typically ugly goblins, monsters and other things. For a kid's movie, these are not cute at all or good-looking, charming, colorful, etc.
For an adults' movie, they're just ridiculously unrealistic-looking, very ugly toys that shouldn't exist even in anyone's imagination, let alone right in the front of your eyes.
There's no deep philosophical message, no questioning the nature of our reality (not really), everything resets at the end like a bad sitcom episode, nothing is really funny or impactful in any way. It's hard to take a friendship between a wobbly puppet and an actual human being seriously, and sometimes it's hard to know what the protagonist really thinks or feels. Are we supposed to just somehow read her 'one-expression'-face?
The story is so thin and disjointed, it's difficult to hold your interest. So they have 'main mission' which consistes of 'multiple different levels' - it resembles more a video game than a movie, and as I mentioned earlier, ironically, the game is better (and it lasts longer, while provoking ane evoking your imagination).
Unless you are obsessed with either the protagonist woman or David's Bulgy Treasures, you are not missing anything by giving this miss-cast, miss-lead miss-tery movie a miss.
It's a fun classic for everyone. Get over yourself..
shareI wouldnt go that far, it had Dance baby dance and very creative visuals and costume designs plus 16 y old J Conely is fine piece of ass. Im joking not joking here.
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I'd put it somewhere around 7/10, the visuals and effects were great, the story was simple, Connelly looked very good but the performance was somewhat stilted, and Bowie was decent enough, the music was kinda disappointing.
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