"It's a Very Muppet Christmas Movie"

2002
-directed by Kirk R. Thatcher
What am i doing here again?
I thought my Muppet movie musings were gone, gone, gone. The small handful i hadn't seen were of the straight-to-video ilk. "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie", a love nod to "It's a Wonderful Life", was supposed to be unwatchable. The post-Henson/Oz years had prepared us for nothing less. But for the first half, this film was very nearly Muppet perfection. Somewhere in the creative team of Tom Martin, Jim Lewis, and Thatcher, is a childhood fan who forgot that this movie was supposed to suck. What's missing is as auspicious as what's here. Missing is the overdose of Gonzo/Rizzo. Missing are the newer characters who fall flat. And yet in the sweeping away of the new, Pepe the Prawn is somehow exempted. And well, Pepe kicks ass.
Returned are all the old-timers, including for the first time since forever, Rowlf and Scooter. They don't go overboard with them, just have them happily present. In a nod to the magic of Oz, Yoda makes a fun cameo. Fozzie is adorable as an accidental Grinch. And more stunningly, the human actors are wonderful. Even those who are often annoying even in non-Muppet productions (David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Joan Cusack) manage to hit the right notes. Triumph the Insult Dog's skewering of the post-Henson era is cathartic perfection. Yes, the music is tepid, and Statler and Waldorf sound like nobody you've ever heard, but at least they're reading good lines.
That said, the second half of the movie is, in Alzheimer's parlance, a very long goodbye. The final forty-five minutes runs about two hours. It's so soporific i debated whether to write this article at all, and whether to now keep the film in my collection. My best guess is that Thatcher had an obligation to make the movie a certain number of minutes, and simply ran out of quality ones. And the sad reality for this TV film is that a "director's cut" will never come to be.
But come Christmas, watch the first half.
And be happy.
3 stars.
POSTSCRIPT: I just watched 1987's "A Muppet Family Christmas", and "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas". The former isn't overly inspired, but it's sweet. It's most striking feature is bringing together three universes: virtually every puppet from Sesame Street, the Muppets, and the Fraggles (with Doc, too) are here. I don't know whether that ever happened before, or after. The sweetest moment is at the end, when we see Jim in the kitchen cleaning dishes as 500 puppets in the next room sing the closing song. "Emmet" is also sweet. A 3-star effort that pushes the boundaries of 4, it is most striking for Paul Williams' songs, which come closer to capturing the musical magic of "The Muppet Movie" than any other post-Muppet Show effort.