Review of The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) by Jesse O — 16 Jun 2014

If I had to rank all the Muppet movies, I'm only missing the most recent film, Most Wanted, from worst-to-best it'd be in this order: Muppets From Space, Muppet Treasure Island, this movie, The Great Muppet Caper, Muppets Take Manhattan, The Muppet Movie, and the excellent 2011 reboot.

So you can see that this is a middle of the road, in terms of quality, for the Muppets. With that said, it's still a pretty good movie. The problem is that, while A Christmas Carol is STILL an excellent story of a man's redemption, I don't think the Muppets really work well when trying to fit into the framework of a story that's been told thousands and thousands of times.

There's still the musical numbers, there's still the clever humor that breaks the fourth wall, Miss Piggy is still great...there's just less of it this time around, because they're working within the confines of this book.

Not that I can blame them for that, but it's still a little disappointing that there wasn't as much Muppet greatness as there is in other, original, films. With that said, if there's one thing I liked about this movie more than any adaptation of A Christmas Carol I've ever seen, and that is Michael Caine's performance.

I think he's, head and shoulders, the best Ebenezer Scrooge there has been. I think his performance isn't as notable because he IS surrounded by Muppets and all this absurd humor, but that doesn't make it any less effective or heartfelt.

This guy is incredible here. It's not anything Oscar worthy, but it is an excellent performance that makes this film worth it even with its flaws. It's probably not even the best adaptation of this story that has ever been made.

I even thought about it raising the rating to 3.5, but I genuinely think this film is just good. I just think the lack of real Muppet insanity held this movie back for me. But that's just me. But this is a good movie nonetheless, this story will always bee a good one and with Caine's excellent performance, then this is at least worth a watch.