8. King Jareth (Labyrinth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViftZTfRSt8 Like Nedry, we're not really supposed to take King Jareth seriously. Well, we're not really supposed to take anything in Jim Henson's Labyrinth seriously, in fact. There's no doubting that the casting of David Bowie as the evil King of the Goblins was a masterstroke; his natural charisma has him energetically dancing around and basically coasting on his stature as a musical demi-God - take the hilarious scene above - but at the same time, his star power distracts from the actual story. Yes, there's actually a story here somewhere, in which a young Jennifer Connelly is trying to rescue her baby brother from Jareth... The feeling watching Labyrinth is that Jareth is supposed to be at least mildly threatening, but that doesn't transpire through to the viewer at all because Bowie's presence is so distinctly hilarious and non-threatening. Compounding this is the fact that he ends up being vanquished by Connelly just reciting some dialogue in his face. Really.
Shaun Munro
Contributor
Frequently sleep-deprived film addict and video game obsessive who spends more time than is healthy in darkened London screening rooms. Follow his twitter on @ShaunMunroFilm or e-mail him at shaneo632 [at] gmail.com.
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