The NeverEnding Story was a classic children’s fantasy of the 1980s, right up there with The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Legend, and The Last Unicorn in creating a latticework of terrifying puppets, questionable animation, and traumatizing storylines. It had an added allure for this small, library-loving nerd: it was about a book that never ended. Most fantasies just give you a perfunctory review of some scrolls or an ancient dusty text before galloping back into an action scene, but The NeverEnding Story is literally about a kid sitting in an attic and reading all day—making it both fantasy and Carverian realism as far as I was concerned.
Looking back at it as an adult (more or less), I was surprised by how well it holds up. True, you have to look past some extremely emphatic acting, and Falkor is slightly creepy now that I’m older—although compared to David Bowie’s tights and Molly Grue’s lamentation for her virginity lost youth, he’s really not that bad. But watching it again gave me a completely different experience, not just an exercise in nostalgia.
Here are 9 reasons you should revisit it, too
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