Day 12. The Muppet Christmas Carol

By 1992, the Muppet Empire was going through a state of recession. Creator Jim Henson had died two years earlier, and I, of the X/Y-cusp Nintendo Generation, having grown up on TV and library screenings of the initial immortal Muppet trilogy (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan), did not feel the need to return to those characters as a pre-teen. It wouldn't be until the '00s that people my age would become hopelessly obsessed with childhood nostalgia, making 2011's The Muppets a must-see event. 

The Muppet Christmas Carol, which barely dented the '92 holiday family film market next to Home Alone 2 and Disney's other big release Aladdin, has acquired a fan base over the years. Though it's another adaptation of Charles Dickens' yuletide standard, it does at least one interesting thing. The movie adds an imaginative boundary for the audience, who is used to pretending actors they know are in fact different characters on screen. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, voice actors play Muppets who are playing characters from Dickens. That's Steve Whitmire as Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit. That's Frank Oz as Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit. For the most part, these characters are permitted to keep most of their defining Muppetness. 

Michael Caine as himself plays Ebenezer Scrooge. He's the heartless, greedy one-percenter amongst the Victorian poor, and can't stand their presence or Christmas cheer. Maybe if they didn't all sing a song with the lyric "There goes Mr. Humbug" whenever he walks past things would be different.

This is a sweet film, with a good spirit and a wisely conceived performance by Caine, who plays the part completely straight, the comic hijinks surrounding him only exacerbating his seriousness. The Muppets are reduced to supporting players in their own movie, and there was probably no way to escape that. Gonzo the Great and Rizzo the Rat get the bulk of the troupe's screen time, narrating the events in the roles of Charles Dickens and… his rat. 

I suspect children will really take to the film, but it must be said, it isn't stellar as either a Muppet movie or a Christmas Carol adaptation. The zaniness of the Muppets is tempered and so are Dickens' cold scares. The Muppet Christmas Carol finds a happy middle-ground for families. It's nice throughout, but refuses to veer far enough into the heartwarming and the heartbreaking. 

The Muppet Christmas Carol and The Meaning of Christmas

As the Paul Williams penned end-credits song informs us, "Wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas!" Scrooge is a non-believer, but his revelation is of the heart rather than of religious doctrine. Which is how it should be. We don't need the Muppets to become VeggieTales.