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.