Butt News Movie Club #21: Labyrinth

Justice for Wet Merlin!

[Did you know that I turned 40 last March and when you turn 40 it’s your birthday all year until your next birthday? IF YOU WANT TO GET ME SOMETHING FOR MY BIRTHDAY, MY ONLY BIRTHDAY WISH IS THAT YOU SUBSCRIBE TO BUTT NEWS USING MONEY! Especially if you are a horny Goblin King with unlimited crystal balls!

As always, if you have suggestions for future movies, put them in the comments HERE.

Also, I took a break but I’m BACK ON CAMEO! Just in time for Valentine’s Day! Or whatever you want! You should book me! Seriously I’m very good at it and all my videos are way longer than they should be because I cannot shut up. If you booked one and I missed it, please rebook!]

We’ve got an owl flapping around. And then it says DAVID BOWIE! Incredible start. That’s everything I need in a movie! And a therapy session. And a porno!

Do you think it was stressful being the composer on a movie with David Bowie in it? If I was the composer on Labyrinth I would have been EXCITED but also attached a note to every section of the score being like “I AM SORRY MISTER BOWIE IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY TRASH WORK YOU CAN SPANK ME IN THE GARBAGE LIKE I DESERVE!” And maybe I would make the songs just a little bit bad on purpose so maybe he would have to spank me in the garbage?? Tee hee!

Did you know this owl was made with the FIRST COMPUTER? I can’t remember: Did we think this CGI was good at the time? I THINK WE DID! That’s cute. Then the computer owl turns into a real owl. I wonder if that owl is dead now. My research tells me that oldest recorded owl in captivity was 50 years old, so this man could still be flapping about in the Hollywood Old Folks Home for Old Showbiz Owls! Two personal owl anecdotes: 1) One time I went to a raptor sanctuary and there was an owl there that had romantically imprinted on the back of one of the keepers’ heads, so every day it would try to mate with her ponytail and I can’t remember if birds can ejaculate but IMAGINE IF IT COULD. LOL! And 2) One time I hit an owl with my car because it was sitting in the middle of the road eating a roadkill just over the crest of a hill in the dark and I cried so hard I almost crashed and died, which would have been street justice I guess. Then the next morning I saw the SAME KIND OF OWL SITTING ON MY FENCE IN BROAD DAYLIGHT WATCHING ME. And keep in mind, I’m not in, like, an OWL AREA. I wasn’t seeing owls all the time! Most people would have had their feathers ruffled but I said go ahead and haunt me, Mr. Owl—I don’t give a HOOT!

Jennifer Connelly runs around a corner and across a wee fairy bridge in a beautiful park wearing head-to-toe Pyramid Collection (A Celebration of the Feminine Spirit™). She’s doing a monologue about a goblin and you’re like “this is a real princess if I’ve ever seen one, that’s exactly the kind of stuff they talk about,” but then, mislead! She’s just a regular modern teenage betch doing a self-tape for Rings of Power season 2! She forgets her big line, “You have no power over me,” which doesn’t seem that hard to remember. Maybe showbiz isn’t for you, Jenny! Leave it to the owls! Also, what play is this? I’ve never understood if this movie is about a girl whose imagination drags her into the pages of her fave novel, or if the world of the novel is real and she just doesn’t know that she’s reading a non-fiction book???? You know?

Jennifer’s dog Merlin is sitting on a bench like a GOOD LITTLE LAD who loves berries and cream, and then he says BORK BORK because he is not only her dog he is also her watch. Oh shit, she’s late for getting guilt-tripped by her blonde stepmother. She and Merlin run home in the rain and we can see that Jennifer has jeans under her gown like a real rock ‘n’ roll badass.

BWIEEEEEEWWW!!! Saxophone! David Bowie can make such a bad song good. And he does it so many times in this movie! Observation: I don’t think that David Bowie is a “better” singer than Michael Jackson, but if DB is singing a song I definitely want to hear it. There are a lot of MJ songs I don’t want to hear at all! Change my mind!

They get home and mean stepmommy doesn’t let Wet Merlin in the house and makes him go into the garage. This is foreshadowing for later in the movie when Jennifer Connelly doesn’t let David Bowie’s Wet Merlin into HER house! I’m so sorry. Am I arrested for writing that?? I said she DOESN’T let him—the correct choice, to be clear!!!!!!!

Stepmommy tells Jennifer/Sarah that she’s an hour late for babysitting and “Your father and I go out very rarely” and Sarah says, “You go out EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND!” which, damning if true, stepmommy! Then stepmom tells Sarah who cares, it’s not like she has a DATE, she was just out solo LARPing with Merlin again, and “You should have dates at your age!” and somewhere far, far away Sarah’s future therapist’s eyeballs turn into dollar signs and make a cash register noise!

Sarah storms off just as her dad trundles into the room all, “Humpdy dumpty whuuurt’s going on hyuuurrp [falls down, farts]??!?” with a cluelessness about family logistics that only an 80s businessman could achieve. Stepmom pouts, “She treats me like a wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say,” which might be true, but for the record everything we’ve seen you say so far was shitty!

That said, SARAH BLOWS. Her dad comes and tries to talk to her and she’s like GO AWAY so he goes away like she asked and she’s like WOW FUCK YOU THEN. Then she notices that someone has moved her collectible teddy bear Lancelot, which she keeps in a display case with her 700 other rare bears—IT’S NOT A TOY IT’S AN INVESTMENT—and she goes fucking apeshit. “Lancelot! Someone has been in my room again! I hate that. I hate it!!!”

Sarah goes to yell at the baby like it’s the baby’s fault someone handed him a bear and finds him drooling all over her NEST EGG aka Lancelot. So she goes, “Someone save me! Someone take me away from this awful place!” OK WITH THE DRAMATICS! You live in a mansion! Lancelot isn’t even a good stuffed animal to hug! He’s one of those stiff ones with the articulated arms and legs. Nasty!

Sarah doesn’t know what else to do so she turns to her one and only coping mechanism: bad monologuing. She “tells the baby a story” (talks to herself about herself in the mirror) about a spoiled baby and a young girl who “was practically a slave” #whitefeminism. But “what no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl… so she called on the goblins for help.” Because “she was hurt by the harsh words of her stepmother.” Wow, yikes, TW for slavery!

Like, are we supposed to like Sarah????? Are we supposed to empathize with her? We’re not, right? Is the message of this movie that humans are the real goblins?

Cut to the goblin gallery, which the movie implies is sort of invisibly crammed all around in Sarah’s nooks and crannies. Gross! Are they just watching her all the time? These squiggly little pervs are jazzed about Sarah’s feud with this baby. They’re like, “Say the words! She’s going to say the words!”

Then Sarah, theater kid, goes, “GOBLIN KING, GOBLIN KING, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE, TAKE THIS CHILD OF MINE AWAY FROM ME!” And you think those are definitely going to be the magic words because they sound so magic…

But then in CLASSIC JIM HENSON JOKE RHYTHM the goblins look at each other like…wtf is this? “THOSE AREN’T THE WORDS!” Lol.

So Sarah goes, “I wish I DID know what to say to make the goblins come take you away,” and the goblins are like JEEEEESUS CHRIST, LADY, “’I wish the goblins would come and take you away!’ How hard is that!!!?!?” Remember when the jokes in kids’ movies were like this instead of an antelope with a juicy ass singing Katy Perry or whatever?

Sarah can’t really hear the goblins, but she can kind of hear them with her heart, I guess? So she puts the baby down and says, “I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now,” basically by accident, and then THUNDERCLAP! BABY GONE.

The lights go out! And they won’t turn back on! Sarah starts running around being like, “Toby?... Toby? Are you all right?” but there’s only silence from the baby area! “Toby, why aren’t you crying?” Bitch, why aren’t YOU crying!?!? This is scary as hell! Sarah goes back into baby’s room but she can’t quite see into the crib. She gets closer and closer and something is moving! There’s a gabbling goblin in there! But when she rips back the covers it’s empty! And there’s an owl flapping at the window! And there’s snickering hobgoblins all over the place but she can’t catch a glimpse! Her stepmom is NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS. THEY GO OUT VERY RARELY.

Then the window busts open and IT’S DAVID BOWIE, a.k.a. Jareth Cutestory the Goblin Lawyer!!!

Sarah’s like um exqueese me did u randomly kidnap my brother or…

And he’s like oh, my bad, I can’t tell white babies and goblins apart.

Sarah: “I want my brother back, please, if it’s all the same.”

Bowie: “What’s said is said.”

Bowie’s Aggressive Codpiece, Which Is Also a Lawyer: “Binding oral contract!!!”

Jareth tells Sarah to “Go back to your room. Play with your toys and your costumes. Forget about the baby,” which, okay, that would be fun for like two more hours until her parents get home, and I don’t think the cops are going to buy “goblin contract” as a reason not to search for this baby? This chick’s going to kid-priz for sure!

Then Jareth says he brought Sarah a present—a beautiful crystal ball! Except it kind of seems like he brought it as a present for himself because he just starts showing off doing all these crystal ball tricks? Like when my husband got “us” NBA League Pass. He never even gives it to her!

Okay, so, no offense, but WHY WOULD A GOBLIN KING WANT A BABY? DOES HE HAVE DIAPERS? Does David Bowie think it’s a fake baby that’s stuffed with cocaine?!

Sarah repeats that she would just like Toby back plz and then THE CRYSTAL TURNS INTO A SNAKE (UPGRADE)! Bowie THROWS THE SNAKE AT HER and it turns into a scarf (downgrade)! See? That is NOT giving somebody a crystal as a present!!!!!!! Jareth’s love language is being bad.

Suddenly they’re outside in a red wasteland. Jareth points at a magic castle beyond a deadly labyrinth and says that if Sarah wants Toby back she can come get him over there. She has 13 hours to solve the labyrinth before Toby is turned into a goblin forever. Is that where goblins come from? Inefficient, imo! Let the goblins fuck!

Also, to echo my previous question about Saruman and orcs: Why would David Bowie want to hang out with GOBLINS AND GOBLINS ONLY 24/7? Sure, they’re both funny ha-ha AND funny-peculiar, but Jareth seems legit erudite! Do you really have enough in common with these chubby little weasels to sustain a deep and meaningful friendship? They are so incompetent! What do you talk about? Chickens??

Sir, seems like you HATE goblins.

Sarah’s like FINE I WILL SOLVE UR LABYRINTH IT DOESN’T EVEN LOOK HARD and Jareth goes, “Turn back, Saaaaaraaah! Turn back before it’s too late!” in a spoOoooOOOOooOooOoky voice!

Sarah runs up to the edge of the labyrinth and right off the bat finds Hoggle taking a piss. His weinurr was out!!!!! Do u think Jim Henson made him a real puppet weenoir as a joke? Like how Kermit’s arms are controlled by little sticks?

Hoggle is wandering around killing fairies with a spray gun. Sarah picks up a dying fairy and calls Hoggle a “monster” because the fairy looks like a beautiful tiny white woman and those have never hurt anyone! The fairy bites Sarah’s finger and Hoggle’s like told u they fucking suck! Okay, so fairies bite—does that mean they deserve to be GASSED TO DEATH? My dog bites me every day! By labyrinth logic should I spray my dog with dead dog spray??

I’ve always wondered about Hoggle’s hat. What’s the point of a hat like that? A hat that doesn’t keep you warm OR keep the sun off OR have a religious significance? Is it a helmet? What does it helm against? Bonks with a puffy pillow?

Hoggle shows Sarah how to get into the labyrinth and warns her not to take too many things for granted. She goes in there and it’s just one long wet hallway. She’s like, ew, “Thanks for nothing, Hogwart!” Lol. Sarah starts walking and she is just getting nowhere. Somebody get this girl a GPS – a Goblin Positioning System!!!!!

What is outside the labyrinth? Is there a whole world? Are there other cities? Uh, waiter, a little world-building, please?

At some point Sarah’s like UGH this hallway goes on forever, and then, in a real Wet Hot American Summer tone, she adds, “…or maybe I’m just taking it for granted that it does!” Like she’s a real fuckin’ genius for remembering what Hogwart said 30 seconds ago. She starts running, like that’s going to help! Then she gets tired after 10 seconds and punches the walls.

Now it’s time for BRITISH WORM!!!!!!!! Best character in any movie????? (Remember earlier when Hoggle had his worm out?)

Best line said to a worm in any movie: “You’re a worm, aren’t you?”

For some reason Sarah is blown away by this worm, which is understandable because this worm rocks, but why is she surprised by a worm and not by Hoggle and EVERYTHING ELSE THAT’S HAPPENED? David Bowie kidnapped her brother and his dick is showing through his pants!

The worm doesn’t know the way through the labyrinth, he’s just a worm. But he wants Sarah to come in and meet the missus (we’ve been watching you from across the bar, etc.). She says that sounds fun but she’s gotta jet. Unfortunately, there are no openings in this labyrinth! Or bathrooms! She’s flummoxed! Werm wermsplains that there’s actually an opening right next to her—it just looks like a wall. Don’t take for granted that your walls are walls! Try walking right through one right now!

Sarah starts to turn left and British Worm screams at her: “Don’t go that way! Never go that way!” So Sarah is like OH THANKS and goes the other way. After she’s gone the worm’s like, “If she’d have kept on going down that way, she’d have gone straight to their castle.” Dang. That’s why you should always tell a worm your goals.

At the castle, the goblins are PARTYING. Who is it fun for—having a baby at the goblin party? The chickens are contributing more to the vibe than Toby is!

Reader, I know you know what time it is!

Speaking as a person who saw this movie minimum 400,000 times as a child and brought a VHS of it with her to college where she watched it frequently for comfort on a 11-inch Panasonic TV/VCR combo that she bought from Vin Diesel out of the trunk of a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, this absolutely batshit insane song makes me EMOTIONAL!!!!! Even the rapping parts!

Also, LOL, via Wikipedia: “At the time of Bowie's death in 2016, ‘Magic Dance’ was the 19th highest selling Bowie song digitally downloaded in the United Kingdom.” I love that Bowie released that entire gorgeous sorry-I-died album and people were just mainlining “Magic Dance” while they wept in their tea. (I know it probably means 19^th highest selling of all time, not just in that moment, but shut up! Let me have it!)

My only complaint about “Magic Dance” is that the lyrics don’t make sense. “Put that baby’s spell on me/Jump magic jump/Put that magic jump on me/Slap that baby, make him free [OR IS IT PEE, CAN WE BE SURE]”? I miss when David Bowie wrote NORMAL lyrics that made SENSE, like “I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa comin’ for you/Keep your mouth shut, you’re squawking like a pink monkey-bird”! You know, CLASSIC rock!

Goblin Who Was in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: “Oh no, they put the baby spell on JUST my dick!!!!!” (I’m sorry.)

Meanwhile, in the labyrinth, Sarah is trying to mark her path by drawing arrows on the ground in lipstick, but every time she does it a tiny angry man comes out and flips the tile over. Sounds like a metaphor to me! Women wasting expensive implements of compulsory femininity to try to keep their bearings in an unfair universe while constantly being sabotaged by small, jealous men? Explicate in comments!

Jareth says to Toby, “In 9 hours and 23 minutes, you’ll be mine!” Again, WHY? Then he throws the baby WAY too high in the air and walks away, just assuming that a goblin will catch him. Do you WANT this baby or do you want to KILL this baby??

Sarah meets the two-headed door llamas, one of which leads to the castle and one of which leads to certain death, one of which always tells the truth and one of which always lies. Sarah is sure that she’s got this.

Sarah: “Would he tell me that this door leads to the castle?”

Llama: “Yes?”

 Sarah: “Then the other door leads to the castle and this door leads to certain death… I figured it out! I could never do it before! I think I’m getting smarter! This is a piece of cake!”

Sorry, you could never do it “before”? You’ve been in this situation BEFORE??

I’ve always wondered if the logic actually works out in this scene but I’m too lazy to brain through it. Can somebody just tell me? Did Sarah ask the question wrong or did the llamas trick her? Anyway, she falls to certain death.

Sarah falls down a shaft lined with gropey hands that grab and touch her grossly. You can’t do this scene now! They modeled all of these hands on Harvey Weinstein’s actual hands. The hands ask Sarah which way she want to go and this idiot says DOWN.

SARAH, RUFKM????

Now she’s in the oubliette, which seems like it should be good news for Jareth, but for some reason he’s mad about it. He sends Hoggle to lead Sarah back to the beginning of the labyrinth so she’ll get frustrated and give up. Why don’t you just leave her in the oubliette until time runs out??

Hoggle gets to there and immediately roasts Sarah: “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT AN OUBLIETTE IS.” Then he tells her that he knows a shortcut outta there. Unfortunately for Jareth, Sarah beguiles Hoggle by discovering his greatest weakness!

Sarah: “You like jewelry, don’t you? If you help me solve the labyrinth, I’ll give you this.” [HOLDS UP UGLY PLASTIC BRACELET SHE MADE AT CAMP]

Hoggle: “Oooooh! Plastic!”

HOGGLE IS SOLD. They creep through a cavern with scary stone guys carved into the walls who are like “THIS IS NOT THE WAY!” “GO BACK!” and Hoggle calls them out for lying and hurts their feelings. They’re sensitive! They just want a chance to work!

Jareth appears and asks Hoggle what’s up and Hoggle says “nothing” and Jareth says another of the Great Lines of Cinema: “Nothing? Nothing? Nothing? NOTHING? TRA LA LA?”

He gets mad at Hoggle for leading Sarah toward the castle instead of the poop chute and threatens to hang him upside down in the Bog of Eternal Stench AND he makes fun of Hoggle’s new bracelet: “What is that plastic thing around your wrist?” Jareth only likes bracelets made of REAL BABIES.

He asks Sarah how she’s enjoying the labyrinth and she says it’s a “piece of cake” (don’t say that!) so he gets out his big clock and makes time move faster like Alton Brown telling the chefs they have to incorporate a zucchini spiralizer into their chocolate souffle. Unfair! Then he tosses the crystal ball down the hallways and it turns into a big spinning drill made of knives. Like, why don’t you just murder her directly?? WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Sarah and Hoggle run away from the knives and manage to push through a door in the wall just before they get diced. There’s a ladder inside! They climb out of a big pot in a topiary garden and Hoggle’s like OK I’M OUT. Sarah is a huge bitch about this, as though he owes her something, so she STEALS HIS PERSONAL JEWELS, WHICH IS SO MEAN!

Now they talk to a cryptic bird-head man, who doesn’t NOT have the same vibe as my dad. She tells bird-head that Hoggle is her friend and bird-head tells Sarah, “the way forward is sometimes the way back,” which doesn’t help at all.

Hoggle’s like, “I like that. I ain’t never been no one’s friend before,” and you better get a little choked up for this lonely gnome!

Then there’s a BIG ROAR and Hoggly runs away! “HOGGLE IS HOGGLE’S FRIEND.” Sarah goes around the corner and finds a bunch of tiny guys speaking maybe a kind of fake Japanese (I see you, 1986!) and holding evil rats on sticks to bite a big monster hanging upside down. She wishes she had something to throw and then rocks start rolling right to her feet. Interesting!

She defeats the little men using throwing and they all run away. The monster is yelling “LUDO DOWN” over and over, so she lets him down from the tree and assumes his name is Ludo, which it is. Where does Ludo live? What does Ludo DO all day? I am very curious about day-to-day life in the Labyrinth!

Ludo’s like, “FRIEND?” and Sarah goes, “THAT’S RIGHT, LUDO, I’M SARAH!” Dude, Hoggle had to do so much shit to become her friend! And then she said he wasn’t even that good of a friend! Sarah’s fake.

Sarah and Ludo find two doors with bickering doorknockers. One of them has a big ring through his ears so he can’t hear and the other one has a big ring in his mouth so he can’t talk. Sarah pulls the second guy’s ring out so she can interrogate him and Ludo puts it in his mouth and it’s sooooooooo cute.

The doorknocker guy says she has to “knock and the door will open,” but he doesn’t want the ring back in his mouth so she can’t knock. Sarah cleverly plugs his nose so he has to open his mouth to breath. Sorry, he has lungs????

They go through the righthand door, no details on how she picked that one (kind of a wasted set-up, imo!), and now they’re in a sparkly forest! Unfortunately, immediately Ludo and his absolute dumptruck ass FALL THROUGH THE EARTH AND DISAPPEAR.

Elsewhere, Jareth is bitching out Hoggle. He says he needs to get BACK ON IT and gives him an evil peach to give to Sarah. Then more award-worthy dialogue!!!! Give this joke an EGOT!

Jareth: “If she ever kisses you, I’ll turn you into a prince.”

Hoggle: “You will?”

Jareth: “PRINCE OF THE LAND OF STENCH! AHAHAHAHAAHA!”

Oh god, it’s my least favorite part. The fire guys. I hate this part! It’s creepy, it’s long, the song is bad, it looks like shit, it serves no purpose in the plot, it goes on FOREVER, and it makes no sense! It’s like they made extra puppets and didn’t know what to do with them. They dance around and try to take off Sarah’s head, blah blah blah, so she takes off their heads and throws them into the woods. It’s like me when I’m about to get my period!

Absolutely sickening.

Sarah runs away and they chase her, and just when they’re about to take her head off, Hoggle throws a rope down for her! She kisses Hoggle to say thank you for saving her and JARETH’S JOKE WAS YET ANOTHER ORAL CONTRACT! THEY ARE DUMPED STRAIGHT INTO THE BOG OF ETERNAL STENCH. IT’S A FART SWAMP! WITH BUTTHOLES!

They catch themselves right before they fall in and start shimmying along the wall, but then the ledge crumbles and they fall on top of Ludo. You didn’t see him right there?” You only fell like four feet! He’s a giant monster yelling “SMEEEEELLLL BAAAAD!” so loud!

Hoggle warns, “You step in this stuff and you stink forever,” and I’ve got bad news—Ludo would definitely step in it.

They get to the bridge and run into Sir Didymus, who is a dog who is also a knight that rides on another dog. Sir Didymus will not let them across the bridge, so he and Ludo have an epic battle. Keep in mind here that it smells so bad!

Ludo wins Sir Didymus’s respect with his skills in battle, and says they are brothers now.

Ludo: “LUDO GET BAROTHER!”

Sir Didymus gives them permission to cross his stink bridge, which instantly collapses. Sarah grabs a branch and is dangling over the stench! Ludo calls his friends the rocks (“ROCKS FRIENDS!”), which rise up out of the bog so Sarah can walk on them. I always felt like there’s definitely trace amounts of stench on each of those stones—Sarah would have perma-stench on her loafers and no one talks about this!

Ludo walks across the stones and each stone makes a different fart. EGOT x2.

Sir Didymus’s dog-horse Ambrosius comes out and hey! It’s Merlin! He escaped from the garage—I hope he’s chipped! Sir Didymus rides the dog across the farting rocks. More puppet dogs riding real dogs in 2023!

Hoggle wants to throw the evil peach into the bog because this ho(-ggle) IS loyal but Jareth’s voice says I WOULDN’T DO THAT, HOGGLE. But, like, what leverage does Jareth have over Hoggle now that he already survived the stench? They’re moving fast toward the castle and getting hungry. Hoggle gives Sarah the dirty peach but he’s really weird about it and I don’t know why that didn’t set off any red flags.

Sarah takes a bite and is like, “it tastes strange…” and Hoggle is like DAMN U JARETH and runs away. Now Sarah is taking a nap in a grove and Jareth’s balls come floating over to visit her and inside the balls she’s a ballerina princess from her jewelry box! Now she’s AT the ball IN the ball!

I was and remain obsessed with Sarah’s hair in this sequence—it’s SO BIG! Now she and Jareth do a weird romantic eye-locking at the masquerade and I believe both the character and Jennifer Connelly are 16, which we can’t endorse.

Sarah searches for Jareth in the crowd but all she finds are terrible goblin aristocrats and not even any passed snacks. Finally she finds him and they dance. The song at the ball is good. Then the clock starts chiming and Sarah’s like OH YEAH, TIME! I forgot I was executing an elaborate cover-up of my horrendous babysitting skills! She throws a chair through the wall and the whole building explodes, presumably killing and maiming hundreds.

Sarah falls out the window into the backseat floor of my car oops I mean a landfill. Hoggle is also there, in a different part of the landfill, moping over a fire. Sarah already forgot what she was doing again. She looks inside the peach in her hand and a WORM COMES OUT! Scared the shit out of me as a kid! Anyway, don’t eat it, Sarah—that’s your British friend’s relative! Oi, bruv!

The junk woman shows up and offers to help Sarah find what she was looking for. I have watched this a million times and I never noticed there was a second junk person:

The junk woman starts handing Sarah a bunch of junk, then leads her through a door to look for more junk and… it’s Sarah’s bedroom! Exactly how it was at the beginning of the movie, except that Lancelot smells like garbage juice now! Sarah’s like, “IT WAS JUST A DREAM! I DREAMED IT ALL, LANCELOT! BUT IT WAS SO REAL. LET’S GO SEE IF DADDY’S BACK!”

Then she opens the door and [RUDE BUZZER] IT’S STILL THE JUNKYARD. Daddy is not back, unless by daddy you mean the junk woman. She comes in and starts giving Sarah all her old toys, piling them all over her. Now Sarah is becoming a junk woman herself! Far too relatable! BRB, compartmentalizing this!

Sarah finds her copy of Labyrinth and refreshes her memory on the magic words. This reminds her that she’s not here to sniff Lancelot and play with her “printing game,” she’s here to steal back the baby that she threw away earlier! Sarah THROWS her music box and the whole building falls down!

She climbs out of the shit pile and Ludo and Sir Didymus are there and conveniently they’re right outside the gates to the Goblin City. So the Goblin City has like NO sanitation system I guess? They just toss all their shit over the wall?

They go inside and everything seems easy-peasy but then an inner gate closes and the gate is a giant robot! The robot tries to hit them with a big axe and Ambrosius runs away and Sir Didymus is like, “You’re embarrassing me!” Lol. I’m sorry, but this robot would definitely win.

But then Hoggle is on top of the wall! He jumps into the robot’s head and there’s a little goblin in there! Hoggle throws the goblin out of the robot and is flailing around like “how do you drive this thing???” and it’s chaos! Eventually he just breaks the robot and has to jump out before it explodes. Then he gives a classic MAN non-apology. Sarah forgives him and gives him his jewels back and Sir Didymus tells him he’s brave. Huge day for Hoggle.

They enter the Goblin City and Sarah starts to get overconfident AGAIN, but of course someone snitches to Jareth.

Jareth: “She must be stopped! Do something!”

DUDE, YOU ARE THE KING! THE REST OF THESE GUYS CAN’T HANDLE “PUTTING ON A HAT.”

The whole goblin army comes out. They’ve got cannons. They’ve got the rats on sticks. They’ve got a bunch of little wiggly guys who run around. How will our heroes survive?

Sarah and friends scatter into the winding streets of the Goblin City. Fortunately for them, the goblin army has like NO PLAN. Sarah doesn’t even seem that stressed. Again, you’re seriously telling me that Jareth hangs out with these idiots all day?

The goblins fire sentient cannonballs, which has to be a war crime. But then Ludo calls the rocks! The rocks come! These goblins do not know what to do against these rocks. I kind of feel like these goblins are not actually a trained military force? Are they like the national guard of Goblin City? Like they mostly just party at Jareth’s house and change Toby’s diapers?

The rocks clear out the streets and Sarah et al go running for the castle. Lots of wacky stuff happens—I can’t write it all down! Go watch the movie!

They enter the castle and run straight up to Jareth’s party room. Hoggle and Didymus want to go with her but Sarah’s like, “I have to face him alone,” which is one of those fairy tale rules no one ever explains. No, you don’t! The chicken is still there.

Sarah chases Jareth and baby around his MC Escher stairs, you know the drill, everything is stairs and gravity goes every which-a-way. Another good Bowie song! I am still confused: Like, does Jareth want the baby or does he want Sarah???? I love Labyrinth, but you cannot say that it is long on plot.

Fucking Toby will NOT SIT STILL and Sarah just doesn’t know how to do upside down stairs. They don’t cover that in dramatic bitch school! Eventually Sarah sees Toby on a lower platform and she JUMPS and falls through space and winds up floating in an airless void full of stair chunks and parts of walls. Jareth is there with his cod in full piece and he looks VERY INAPPROPRIATELY EROTIC. He proceeds to EROTICALLY guilt-trip her, like, I’ve done ALL OF THIS FOR YOU—I kidnapped your frenemy Toby, I introduced you to British worm, I dumped Hoghead in the stink, I gave you the last peach from my Evil CSA, and you’re still not my wife!?!??! “I am exhausted from living up to your expectations! Just let me rule you and you can have everything that you want!... Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave!”

But Sarah, abolitionist, who knows the pain of slavery, such as when your stepmother hurts your feelings with her words, says hell no. Instead of accepting Jareth’s admittedly weird offer (YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER), she performs the monologue from her book! Jareth is like STOOOOOOOOP! Bad theater is my weakness!

At the last second she forgets the pivotal line again (Jesus Christ), but then remembers it: “YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME!” Jareth is like crap. He throws his crystal ball in the air and folds in on himself until he’s just a terrible CGI/puppet combo owl, which was pretty triggering for me because that’s exactly how my uncle died.

And Sarah’s back home! She goes running upstairs to look for Toby and he’s there in his crib! Way to go, Sarah, you woke him up! She puts Lancelot in Toby’s crib and says, “I’d like Lancelot to belong to you now.” Wow, so generous.

Sarah goes back to her room and hears her parents come home and we see—wait, WTF, she has a weird figurine of Jareth?? Is the whole story just Jareth’s revenge for how unflattering his merch is?

he looks like Noel Fielding

So, to clarify, Labyrinth is an established fantasy franchise inside the world of Labyrinth?? This is like if you were a big Game of Thrones fan and you were offhand like, “Ugh, I wish Ser Gregor Clegane would lance my brother in the throat during an otherwise peaceful king’s tourney,” and then it happened. And don’t say this movie is just Sarah hallucinating that she’s stepped into her favorite book, making a point about the bittersweet twilight of childhood, because two seconds from now all her goblin friends are about to show up in her room IRL!

First Ludo appears in the mirror and says, “GOO-BYE SAWAH!” and I know it’s just the voice of longtime Henson collaborator Rob Mills, but I dare you not to squirt a tear or two! Sarah looks around, but Ludo’s not there. Hmm. She turns back to the mirror and Hoggle and Didymus are there too, saying that should she need them, for any reason at all…

Sarah: “I NEED YOU, HOGGLE!” [Ed.: Are you sure you need Hoggle specifically?]

Hoggle: “You do?”

Sarah: “I don’t know why [Ed.: rude], but every now and again in my life, for no reason at all, I need you. All of you.”

Hoggle: “Well, why didn’t you say so!?!?” [Ed.: SHE DID SAY SO, JUST NOW]

And then everyone’s there in the room, partying! (Ugh, who invited the fire guys!?)

Everyone except JARETH, who’s watching the party angrily through the window from a tree, where he is stuck being an owl forever due to Sarah’s powerful friendzone spellaroonie. He flies away to the moon where he becomes the new King of the Gleep-Gloops, and meanwhile Goblin society rapidly collapses because Jareth was the only semi-competent person in the whole dang realm.

Great job, Sarah! You suck!