Despite having been old enough to have appreciated it the first time around back in the mid 1980s this film was one that I have never seen. I don’t know why exactly I missed this one, because I both saw and loved the film ‘Labyrinth’ in 1986. Today I redressed the balance and settled down to watch ‘The Neverending story’ for the first time.

I’m 32 now, and I have to say that I found this film boring, long-winded, and fairly transparent in its plot. It actually left me feeling that I have not been missing anything at all in the last two and a half decades. I’ve talked with Zoë about this and can only come to the conclusion (because she loved this film) that this effect is a product of the age at which we both first watched it. Maybe if I had watched this aged 5 I would have loved it too? Unless that time machine that Tomorrow’s World kept promising turns up I guess I’ll never know exactly what my 5 year old incarnation would have made of it. I do know that I loved some pretty dire stuff back then which has failed to rekindle the same excitement and love when rewatched more recently.

It made me wonder what I would actually make of ‘Labyrinth’ if I were to have come to that film for the first time today? Actually, I can’t remember the last time that I watched it – maybe it will have lost a lot of its magic if I ever sit down and watch it again?