The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Director: Brian Henson

Cast: Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson

Have I Seen it Before: Let’s put it this way: the frequency of the phrase “who did not die” is uttered in my house would annoy everyone that isn’t my wife or I. It certainly annoys the cat, who, by the way, stepped on me as I wrote this sentence.

Did I Like It: What is the role of a movie? Is cinema the only predominantly American export, shifting hundreds of millions of dollars around for the sake of the shift? Are they the only endurable cultural time capsule we are capable of creating in the modern age, even when the contemporary ones mostly smack of insincerity? Or am I overthinking the whole exercise, and they are just another kind of entertainment, no different at their core than Gregorian chants or paintings of cherubs?

Na, I think it’s a third thing. We watched the movie on Christmas Eve, with a holiday season nearly behind us that threatened to bring any reasonable person I’m related to the brink of madness. I could have searched the entirety of human experience for something to turn the mood around, and would have come up short. I even bought British Christmas crackers to give it a shot, but it turns out low-grade explosives only work on the fourth of July, even when they come with fun paper hats.

But you want to know something? Caine’s perfectly calibrated, straight-faced performance, combined with a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Dickens story, infused throughout with just the right amount of Muppets zaniness caused or hearts to grow, if not two sizes, than just enough to get to sleep and face another day of needless familial acrimony.

That’s what the movies are. Escape is too tidy a word, I think. They are a vehicle for transcending anguish, if even temporarily. One might think that the Muppets lost something after Jim Henson’s death, but I would say—at least at this point—the original magic was certainly still present.

The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Director: Jim Henson

Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. A VHS recording from a local UHF station in the `80s became a regular staple in my house growing up. As much as I had uncertainty that I actually had seen The Muppet Movie (1979) in the past, that doubt was completely absent here.

Did I Like It: I can feel the criticisms of this movie as I watch it. It’s too jokey. It’s too irreverent. It’s too—dare I say it—clever?

Those people are wrong. The entirety of Henson’s output has been a concerted fight between goofing off (anything with the proper Muppets) and more earnest whimsy (anything Disney decided wasn’t worth buying after Henson died). This is the peak of that former mold, and it is in every way authored by Henson. Whereas The Muppet Movie (1979) had to shoulder the not insignificant burden of proving that the Muppets could even conceivably work on the silver screen, everyone could relax here and dwell on the absurdity that are the confines of a movie. Preposterously bad casting of family members (a running gag has Fozzie (Oz) and Kermit (Henson) as twin brothers) , credits (“Nobody reads those names anyway, do they?” “Sure. They all have families.”) and the very notion of exposition (“It has to go somewhere.”). All of it is picked apart directly in the movie and singularly fuels the best parts of the Muppet’s sense of humor in movies to come.

But in that wry sense of the absurd, in that chasing of the laugh, the film doesn’t try to shed the things that made the Muppets beloved in the first place. The Happiness Hotel might very well be the nastiest hotel that the movies have ever brought us (I include The Overlook from The Shining (1980) in that calculus), but who wouldn’t want to stay there when Dr. Teeth (Henson) the Electric Mayhem (feat. Rowlf (also Henson*) are around? It’s not just that the Muppets are lovable, it’s impossible to not want to be around the characters whenever possible.

*My working theory after also spending some time watching The Muppet Show? Dr. Teeth is merely a vaguely humanesque suit that Rowlf wears for certain gigs

The Muppet Movie (1979)

Director: James Frawley

Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt

Have I Seen it Before: You know… I can only say I’m kind of sure I have. Large portions call up a memory, but others are a complete blank. Ours may have been more of a The Great Muppet Caper (1981) house.

Did I Like It: Is it even possible to dislike the Muppets? Especially in that uniquely, brazenly period of cascading creativity when Jim Henson wielded these characters to their maximum potential?

No one would have been considered controversial if they spent the `70s convinced that Kermit (Henson) and company were a phenomenon that could not move beyond the scope of television shows like Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. They are funny, and they are cute. But can anything surpass the confines of television when, by their very nature have to be shot from the waist up?

That wasn’t enough for Henson*. He proceeded to make a movie that is just as funny and charming as his television work, but credibly lets the characters inhabit the big screen. Cameos abound, and any movie filled with that many famous people would be almost automatically considered a case of subtraction by addition. But here, it’s somehow both expected and adds to the material. Everyone fits into the movie like. puzzle piece, and it’s just an absolute head scratcher that Orson Welles didn’t end up guest starring on The Muppet Show, considering how fond he was of Henson’s work.

And what’s more, this is just the opening salvo in Henson’s brief quest to see just how far his deceptively simple puppets could go. One could only imagine how far he might have gone if he had lived just a bit longer.

* He didn’t direct the film or write it, but anyone who thinks he’s not the author of any Muppet production prior to his death is kidding themselves.