LABYRINTH has hit 40, while the knobheads who endlessly quote it turned 40 quite some years ago. It, and these children’s films, are apparently impossible to get over:
Shrek (2001)
Not that funny, because you forget long bits like Robin Hood and the Matrix parody, and kicked off a whole ‘what if fairytales, but irreverently adult’ movement which is still reverberating around culture today. Yes, it made you feel smirkingly sophisticated when you were ten. You’re not ten now and you’re not sophisticated either.
Labyrinth (1986)
Had David Bowie in, far from the worst of his mid-80s career choices, but that doesn’t make it a good film. It’s got simultaneously too many and not enough Muppets in for that. And there should be signs above every student bar saying ‘The management reserves the right to eject anyone quoting the “you remind me of the babe” bit from Labyrinth’.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Yes, yes, it made the metaphor of children abandoning toys equating to children moving on from their parents unignorable. Yes, you cried when you watched it. You cry when you smash your head on a cupboard door, but that doesn’t make it an endlessly repeatable experience others need to hear about. Anyway the toys are fine, they’ve been in shit sequels.
The Dark Crystal (1982)
Even Dark Crystal fans don’t like The Dark Crystal, not really. Otherwise when Netflix announced a multi-million dollar prequel series with an all-star cast back in 2019, they would have watched it. Instead they checked out an episode, silently admitted the puppets were stupid and the Skeksis voices irritating, switched off and it was cancelled.
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
The jumping-on point for a generation of weeaboos, it’s a lovely film with sumptuous animation but not a lot really happens, does it? Totoro is an occasional presence, the bit with the cat bus provides as much action as in The Snowman in a film three times the length, and it’s mainly about an ill mum. Not everybody you meet needs to watch this.
Bambi (1942)
Traumatised a generation, apparently, though given it was the Boomers it’s odd they weren’t already traumatised by Dad coming home from Normandy shy a limb. Still fetishised today by the visually illiterate including Molly-Mae Hague, who named her daughter after it. Does she know what happens to Bambi’s mother? Don’t tell her.
