The Muppet Christmas Carol

Movie. 1993. Brian Henson

RIZZO THE RAT : Boy, that's scary stuff! Should we be worried about the kids in the audience?
GONZO THE WEIRDO : Nah, it's all right. This is culture!

Jim Henson died in 1993. His career was filled with wild ambition - Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Storyteller. There is a psychedelic, experimental, utopian strain to Jim Henson’s work. Even Fraggle Rock was conceived as “A show that will stop war”.

There is not much psychedelic or utopian about The Muppet Christmas Carol, produced by the Henson company after the elder Henson’s death. It works to be faithful to Dickens original story, often quoting directly from the source text. As such, it introduces poverty, grief, death, and hell into the world of the Muppets.

Surprisingly, this works.

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I write a few of these a week. You can get them in your email box if you want!