My Favourite Christmas Movie: The Muppet Christmas Carol

My Favourite Christmas Movie: The Muppet Christmas Carol

Posted on Tuesday December 23, 2008, 14:35 by Emily Phillips in Empire States

Now, running after Brazil, Die Hard and Uncle Buck, touting of The Muppet Christmas Carol as my favourite festive movie just seems unimaginative. But I put this to you, that unlike all the others, this film leaves no one - not the poor, the old, the young, the cast-out - no one, still uttering ‘Bah Humbug’ by the time the credits roll.

Having watched it twice already this festive season, I can fully vouch for the power of this all singing, all dancing, all encompassing tale of the misery-guts who finds Christmas. It has cheesy sing-along songs; pitch-perfect one-liners (“light the lamp, not the rat”); Beaker and Bunsen as the least offensive charity-muggers known to man; and Michael Caine hamming it up with a blob of mustard on top. What is not to love? Some may say there is even something phantasmically endearing about the fiendishly foetal Ghost of Christmas Past...

Song-wise, The Muppet Christmas Carol outstrips every other original Christmas film score, and as much as Home Alone can roll out Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree to great effect - it can’t beat a number like One More Sleep ‘til Christmas or Thankful Heart for giving you the good old warm and fuzzies.

Sure the film ties neatly into my childhood, but it also ties together two of my favourite things - Victorian-times and puppets, and the Muppets here take on a much more muted, less garish look than in their previous big-screen outings. The cuteness factor in this film is unrivalled. Gizmo is not a patch on Bean the carol singing Bunny, who is unbearably mistreated by Scrooge, then seen sleeping rough, shivering under a newspaper on that night-of-nights Christmas Eve. We have the hungry mouse family who take any opportunity to interject “no cheeses for us mices” into any song. And then there is Tiny Tim, a character who never fails to bring a tear to my eye (even in live-action interpretations of the tale), but whose plight is further enhanced by his diminutive amphibious stature. The scene where Kermit’s Bob Cratchit is moseying home with his ailing son perched on his shoulder, has to be one of the most bitter-sweet in any sentimental Christmas movie, and Tiny Tim’s absence from the future scene is just as traumatising as anything from Watership Down.

Aside from sweet and cuddly Muppets, there are also some of the most comedic characters in any festive funny, including National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. There’s Marley & Marley the classic curmudgeons putting the frighteners on their old colleague Ebenezer; the fearful rat-clerks under Scrooge’s employ asking for a shovel of coal to warm them, and then screaming “Heatwave!” dressed for a luau when he refuses; our story-tellers Gonzo and Rizzo joining in with the penguins Christmas skating party; and the brief but rocking appearance from Animal and the band at Mr Fozziwig’s party. Plus, who could forget the singing horses and vegetables? As Rizzo notes, “never eat singing food.”

The Muppet Christmas Carol never strays far too from Dickens’ original material, and we still get a sense of the cautionary tale, but reinvigorated by the colour and craziness of Jim Henson’s puppets. The film may have been beaten at the box-office back in1992 by Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but Christmas movies are all about the replay value- and this has it by Santa’s sack-load. I could watch this over and over and never tire of coming back around to Tiny Tim’s joyful message at the end- “God bless us, everyone.”