Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

Director: Brian Henson

Cast: Tim Curry, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson

Have I Seen It Before: I come to unavoidable conclusion that I have not. It’s probably just the right mix of it coming out at that specific time in life where I would have wanted to avoid any film “for kids” and the fact that the film just doesn’t enjoy the same kind of ubiquitous cultural permeation as The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)* that I just managed to skip it.

Did I Like It: I hesitate to compare this with Carol too much, but there are some useful contrasts on display. It’s entirely possible that Dickens is just a bit more dynamic of a writer than Stevenson, and any adaptation of their works one might feel compelled to compare is going to favor Dickens over Stevenson.

While the Muppets inject their usual brand of humor into the proceedings, the fusion between nineteenth century literature and early nineties is less smooth here. There are moments where this is a comedy, and there are moments where it is an adaptation of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. There aren’t a lot of moments that reach for both, even if to do so risks embracing cinematic paradox.

There’s a also a problem with the central performance. Tim Curry as Long John Silver here is as charming and incorrigible as he is at any other point in his career, but there’s a seduction*, for lack of a better term that feels like a mistake. Caine played Scrooge straight, as if he were appearing in any other production of Carol, where Curry almost views himself as—or desperately wants to be—one of the Muppets himself. It renders him, sadly, as one of the less intriguing Muppets, where he could have given a performance that stands the test of time.

It’s okay. He was much better in other films.

*That is the kind of thing that happens to Christmas movies, after all.

**Curry himself once described Miss Piggy as the one who got away, which in and of itself almost negates the criticism I’m reaching for here.

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 Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

Director: Frank Oz

Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I’m the guy who keeps noticing that the diner Jerry and George eat in the pilot of Seinfeld is actually the exterior of the luncheonette where the Muppets work here. It’s the movie released the weekend of my birth, no less.

Did I Like It: I really wished I did. It doesn’t have the heart of The Muppet Movie (1979), or the demented, anarchic glee of The Great Muppet Caper (1981). It might be unfair to say that a film based on characters who made their bones in a variety format is short on plot, but those previous films made good—and in the case of Caper, great—cases for their existence. Here, the Muppet gang are small-timers who want to make it big with their obvious talent and charm. Sound familiar from The Muppet Movie? It should. And then—surprise of all surprises—they do it. Without ornate sequences involving Kermit (Henson) and Piggy’s (Oz) nuptials and imagining the muppets as babies* which add nothing to the proceedings, the runtime might not have even qualified as a feature.

This is all perfunctory, as if all of the Muppet crew (here all together for the final time in a feature before Henson’s passing in 1990) desperately wanted to be doing something else. After reading the recent Brian Jay Jones biography of Henson, I’m thinking that was probably the case. Oz never felt comfortable with the Muppet label and seems to tolerate this exercise so he can have a hit under his belt so he could start directing what he might have viewed as real movies. The Dark Crystal (1982) bombed somewhat scandalously two years earlier, and I even get the sense throughout the is film that Henson hoped Crystal’s failure wouldn’t mean he’d have to be attached at the hip with Kermit for the rest of his days.

*Even the Muppets characters themselves stop the movie cold to eye a Saturday Morning cartoon deal.