Dave Made a MazeIs a Wacky Fairy Tale About the Folly of Trying to Make Something Perfect

The form of address character of Dave Made a snarl is a guy wire who loves making thing . He ’s also a guy wire who ca n’t finish things . When the one project he finally manages to make forward motion on swallows him whole , his have intercourse ones go on an adventure to try and draw in him out .

I watched most of Dave Made a tangle today , which was the last icky day of a foresighted shitty workweek where I ’ve been provoke by job that are beyond my individual power to solve . Interruptions and distraction feel impossible to palisade off and my humour nudged me toward wanting to hate it , with the words “ naive , ” “ twee , ” and “ ego - soft ” floating at the quick . But , despite all that , I recover myself liking the movie .

Dave Made a Maze did n’t as if by magic ameliorate my mode or anything transformative like that . The reason it advance me over was because it ’s a loopy fable about reckoning with one ’s own inner cognitive operation , the whim that spark and self - subvert our hopes and dreams . The dearest and friction that comes from trying to make something that will grab people ’s attention , speak a little truth , or provide escape move through every shape of the film .

In Dave Made a Maze , the titular character ( Nick Thune ) feverishly build up a cardboard labyrinth over a weekend and venture inside , only to get turn a loss inside its eddy and act . After girl Annie ( Meera Rohit Kumbhani ) comes home from a work trip , she watch that he ca n’t get out . News of Dave ’s predicament spreading and soon his friend enter his flaky foundation to try and pull through him .

Directed by Bill Watterson , the movie pay for you in with a loose , low - key sense of whimsicality right from the very starting , sort of feel like a Goonies for grown - ups . As Dave ’s Quaker cheat on around the maze , they marvel at the workmanship and references that the construct halt . Synth pop burble up as the group fleet the boxes from a barely used keyboard that line the entryway of a pianoforte - theme hallway . However , these cute elements model alongside more unsafe trap and mysteries , like a giant face that spits out shredded paper and origami phallus .

And just when you think you ’re on the same wise community - theater wavelength as the plastic film , Dave Made a Maze jolts you with sudden shocks and heavy existential reflection . Or as Dave order it about halfway through the moving-picture show , “ It was just cardboard ! No one was supposed to get bruise . ”

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

It ’s clear from the very beginning that Dave Made a Maze is supposed to be a metaphor for the highs and lows of the originative process . Watterson ’s moving-picture show cycles through frustration , discovery , sharing , and paranoia during the course of its runtime . His friend ’ journeying through the maze is a tour of Dave ’s neuroses , ego - loathing and heavily - won creative epiphanies .

This movie is n’t leaden on star power . James Urbaniak slyly steals scene as Harry , a raspingly delusional documentary film film maker who keeps trying to stage the group odyssey for maximum commiseration . There ’s a freaky bit of world - collide casting that has pro wrestler John Hennigan stalk around shirtless as a silent , dirt - blur minotaur . Dave Made a Maze employs a cascade of surprising special effect treatments to keep the self-love that characters are moving through a miscellaneous dreamscape . They change by reversal into different form and mediums — creature , origami , projections — each come with by a little tingle of wonderment at the creators ’ ingenuity .

Ultimately , the thing that Dave made is a mess . And , though it took a piece of him with it — one that he does n’t miraculously rise back by the end of the movie — the maze lives on in unexpended , unexpected ways . Worst of all , though his cosmos finds an end , it ’s not because he land up it . It ’s not clean that Harry will wind up with a flick that he can screen out at festivals , either . All Dave and his friends can do is clean house up all the attractively cut - up composition board , look back at what happened with all its imperfections . Yet , this film ’s most glowing redeeming quality manifest as a rapt flurry of esthetics , which comes across as a jubilation of craft for its own sake . “ Look at what we can do , even though we ’re stalled , insecure , yearning human existence . ” Will Dave attempt again ? Who knows ? He may not wind up with a commercial hit , but it ’s so much better than afford up .

William Duplessie