Review of The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) by Edith N — 21 Dec 2011

Really? I Haven't Reviewed This?

It's perverse, really. I've reviewed a terrible direct-to-video Christmas movie they made with David Arquette, and it turns out I've never reviewed the good theatrical release Christmas movie. Which I don't think I saw in the theatre; despite my family's intense association with the Muppets, we didn't see most of the movies in the theatre, for some reason. I think probably it was our finances, though they would have straightened out by 1992. At least mostly. Still, I've owned this for years, about as long as any other Christmas movie in my collection, and I can't believe I've never gotten around to it. I am fonder of it than I am of many of the classics, too; I'm not sure I own [i]It's a Wonderful Life[/i] and am not inclined to buy it if I don't. It is also, as it happens, my favourite version of [i]A Christmas Carol[/i], though I'm notorious among my friends for the fact that I don't actually like Dickens.

We, like Charles Dickens (Gonzo the Great), know the story of [i]A Christmas Carol[/i] like the back of our hands. Still, on the off chance that you don't, it is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine, or Sir Maurice Micklewhite if you'd rather). He is a vicious and stingy man who mistreats and underpays his clerk, Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog). He is never kind or merciful and mocks the very idea of Christmas joy. One Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghosts of his former partners, Jacob and Robert Marley (Statler and Waldorf). They inform him that, if he is to escape their doom, he must change his ways. To that end, he will be visited by three ghosts, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. They are what they sound like, and they show him what it sounds like they show him. We learn what has made Ebenezer Scrooge who he is and what his eventual fate will be if nothing is changed.

It's true that I don't like Dickens and never really have. It isn't actually true that he was paid by the word, not entirely--he was for some of his career but not all of it. However, he did write serials and was therefore paid by the installment. I think most of his works could benefit from judicious editing, and [i]A Christmas Carol[/i] is on that list. (For the curious, I don't think [i]A Tale of Two Cities[/i] needs editing--when he babbles, he teaches history--and I think some books, [i]Great Expectations[/i] among them, cannot be saved.) However, that doesn't mean he was entirely a bad writer, and my favourite part of this movie is that it captures the good lines which don't make it to other versions, because this version is Charles Dickens telling the story to Rizzo the Rat, which leaves in "Scrooge climbed the stairs, caring not a button for the darkness. Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it." This is in fact great character description, which is more important than the ludicrously whimsical names so many Dickens characters have.

I think it was an excellent decision to cast a human as the main character in this, and I think they cast the perfect human. Disney, when they did the story, had a character to slip into the role--for heaven's sake, they named him Scrooge in the first place. But there is no Muppet for the part, and I think creating one would have been the wrong decision. And while I know that Michael Caine is in fact a funny, charming guy, that's not the Scrooge he is able to portray and does so here. His own origins were much lower than Scrooge's, but he seems to have a great feel for the nature of the character. He is a somber man, a dark and dour man. His life did not go the way he wanted it to, and it soured him. He didn't deal with it; he held it in and let it shape him. And Michael Caine creates that Scrooge, lets us into that Scrooge's mind and life. It's a role played by dozens of men in TV and the movies, and I think Michael Caine is one of the best.

It does irk me that they trimmed the romantic ballad, and it irks me even more that the DVD only puts it back in if you choose to watch the film fullscreen. This strikes me as backward; completists watch things widescreen, obviously. I can see how little kids might find the song boring, but I think it is an important moment for the character. This is the first turning point for Scrooge, the moment where he realizes that maybe he'd made a mistake somewhere back in his life. He's still determined to live with that, I think, but he is finally now forced to acknowledge it, whereas he's probably spent every day since it happened pretending it hadn't. So. Does it slow things down? Sure. But I don't necessarily think that's always wrong. There are several movies wherein my favourite scene is one that slows things down, but they're often vital to the story for all that. And after all, it's not as though [i]A Christmas Carol[/i] is exactly non-stop action even without the song in the middle.