No story on Earth has been done to death as thoroughly as Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Every possible iteration of this classic story has been made. I tried to find out how many versions there were by typing “A Christmas Carol” into the IMDB search bar, and it called me an asshole.
RELATED: “Wonka” Shocks At The Box Office As Timothée Chalamet Propels Movie To $150 Million Worldwide Gross
Or it may as well have. I stopped counting the screen adaptions when I hit the fifth search page of results. A Nashville Christmas Carol, A Country Christmas Carol, Dora’s Christmas Carol, Bug’s Bunny’s Christmas Carol, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, All Dogs Go to Heaven Christmas Carol, Bill Murray’s Retarded Version, The Stingiest Man in Town, Machi Ichiban Kechinbō (that was the version Hayao Miyazaki worked on), Scrooge in the Hood, A Zombie Christmas Carol, An Ex-Hooker’s Christmas Carol, … I didn’t make any of those up. I’m barely scratching the surface here, there’s better than a hundred of these things.
I’ve seen several of these, forgotten most, and never seen the majority. The BBC’s latest version earned my highly uncoveted Avoid Like The Plague rating.
Yet, the only Christmas Carol my family faithfully watches just about every year is The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Why? What does this one get so right?
I will not review the plot of A Christmas Carol here. If you don’t know it, you’re sad, retarded, and lying.
Truthfully, Dickens’s story has been remade so many times and in so many redundant iterations because Scrooge’s story of redemption on Christmas Eve is perfect. As a writer, I don’t use the term “perfect” lightly, but A Christmas Carol is. There was nothing Charles Dickens got wrong.
RELATED: TOP 5 Doctor Who Christmas Specials: The Pride Of England!
It’s a profoundly Christian tale of hope and redemption for a man who seems on the face of it beyond any chance of recovering his lost humanity or the salvation of his soul. Yet by looking closely at his life, the world around him, and a potential future where his damnation has left the world a hollow, hopeless place Ebenezer Scrooge is redeemed.
Consequently, you’d think a silly version with puppets would just be another one of the 100+ utterly disposable variations on the same narrative.
But The Muppet’s Christmas Carol stands out on so many levels that it just manages to become something special.
RELATED: Alan Ritchson Brings High-T Action To Prime Video In ‘Reacher’ Explosive Second Season
It came out in 1992 when I was deploying my ass off. It was already on video when the ops tempo of my life gave me enough breathing space in garrison to peruse it in the Jacksonville Blockbuster Video on Western Blvd.
I looked at it and said, “Nah. I’m past the Muppet part of my life.” While I had loved the Muppets as much as any other Gen X kid, by 1992 they had sadly earned a reputation for bringing nothing new to the party. Jim Henson had been dead for a couple of years, and honestly, it didn’t feel like Kermit was alive anymore. I wrote it off (in admittedly sophomoric ignorance) as something beneath me now.
Then I had kids.
During a rather snowy December, my wife and kids watched it on TV and drank hot cocoa.
Made from scratch hot chocolate cocoa with homemade peppermint marshmallows.
RELATED: Disney Is Attempting Yet Another X-Files Reboot, Despite The Failures Of Past Attempts
This cocoa, explained to me by the Mother of the Darkspawn, would only be made available to me if I sat down and watched this movie with my children rather than doing more work in my den. It didn’t seem like a big sacrifice. After all, I had loved the Muppets when I was a kid.
But as I watched, I became very impressed with how well it worked as a movie. I figured Michael Caine would do the usual mugging along with the Muppets that all the celebrities tried to do and only Johnathon Winters and Robin Williams ever really succeeded at.
The truth is the human actor invariably ended up playing second fiddle in any Muppets production, but in this version, Caine took the lead and ran with it. He is the star, and they are merely the supporting players. How did he do it?
Simple, he wasn’t starring in a comedy, even if the Muppets were. Michael Caine had been in the business long enough to know when not to compete on a field that didn’t favor him. Instead of hamming it up, he played it completely straight. “I’m going to play it like I’m playing opposite the Royal Shakespeare Company,” Caine said.
The end result was that you didn’t mentally dismiss Ebenezer Scrooge’s story of salvation because that was indeed what you were watching. Brian Henson, for his part, knew enough to follow his lead actor when he was going in the right direction. As a result, the Spirits of Christmas all played it straight too. While there was a bunch of muppet gags that kept the little kids giggling and the adults engaged with a story they knew completely by heart, it didn’t detract from the narrative.
A narrative that is completely intact, pretty much all of Dicken’s words are in this version of the movie. Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat acted as both a Greek chorus and Pope in the Pool, while reciting Dickens’ narration, which is often the first thing filmmakers cut because they are afraid of losing the audience during a ton of voiceovers. In this case, little kids are kept engaged by their antics (LIGHT THE LAMP, NOT THE RAT!) while this integral part of the story is being told.
It can honestly be said to enhance it and after (holy glob) more than thirty years, it has moved into the status of a Christmas classic.
Merry Christmas to all.
What do you think of the Muppet Christmas Carol? Leave a comment!
NEXT: Super Plumber Sisters Chapter 1 by Tyler Carpenter Rocks Pipe-Fixing Cuties VS Water Demon Monsters!
Leave a Reply