It’s Christmas Day, and I probably should have posted this yesterday because most of the action takes place on Christmas Eve, some of it is on Christmas Day, so I’m going with it. And yes I realise that this my second post about a Christmas Carol adaptation in less than a week but I maintain that this isn’t just the best Muppet Movie, it’s also the best on screen Christmas Carol adaption.
I can’t believe any of you don’t know this, but The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Muppet’s take on Dickens’ classic novel. Michael Caine plays Ebenezer Scrooge, and human actors play his nephew and his nephew’s wife, as well as Scrooge’s former love interest, but every other character in the story is played by a muppet. Kermit is Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy is his wife, The Great Gonzo is Charles Dickens guiding us through the story, with the help of Rizzo the Rat (“light the lamp not the rat!”).
I think it goes without saying that Michael Caine is brilliant in this. There’s this quote that does the rounds on reddit every year about the movie:
The reason Michael Caine and Tim Curry are so good in their respective Muppet movies is that Michael Caine treats the Muppets as fellow actors, and Tim Curry treats himself as a fellow Muppet.
And it’s right – I’ve seen quotes where he says he treated it like he was acting at the RSC – deadly serious, straight acting. And he clearly loved making it and loves the film – as you can see in this GQ interview from 2016. But as well as Michael Caine being excellent, the Muppets are great and they’re playing characters that aren’t (just) themselves. And there are so many little touches that make it brilliant – like adding a second Marley brother so that they can be played by Stadler and Waldorf, Tiny Tim being Robin the Frog but all the girls being pigs.
So it’s got great acting, but it’s also got songs and a surprising amount of actual Dickens dialogue and it will make you smile what ever time of year you watch it. One of my friends had this on VHS when we were kids and we would watch it maybe every other month when I was over at hers. I think I knew all the words to all the songs and could probably still remember most of them although an extra one has been restored since so I’m not as good on that.
It’s on Disney+ these days, but you can also rent it from other streaming services if you don’t have that one at the moment.
Happy Christmas!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 