[9.0/10] A Christmas Carol is sobering, it is frightening, it is heartening, and in the right hands, it is also hilarious. For such a frequently-adapted work, that cacophony of tones makes it surprisingly hard to perfect. Lean too much into the mirth, and you lose the terror of the ghost story. Lean too much into the regrets of your protagonist, and you lose the seasonal joy the novel promotes. Lean too far into the message, and you miss the levity the piece can bring.
Maybe that’s why The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best realization of Charles Dickens’ classic. The felt frolickers had proven over decades that they were masters of juggling different tones, able to successfully convey the irreverent, the heartfelt, the artsy, the melancholy, and even the terrifying without missing a beat. Jim Henson’s troupe always had an experimental, anything goes bent, and it makes them the unexpectedly perfect team to tackle the famed holiday tale.
Because the Muppet adaptation is a surprisingly faithful one. Despite adding the sterling humor the puppet paragons bring with them, and turning the story into a musical, the movie doesn’t pull its punches. Everything is accessible enough for younger audiences (with fourth-wall notes that it’s okay to get a little spooky here since it’s “culture”), but also potent enough to deliver the beats and messages of the original tale with genuine force.
Some of that’s in the movie’s willingness to get scary. Scrooge’s transforming door-knocker remains an impressive, unnerving effect decades later, and makes the audience share his nerviness when he checks his house for ghosts. Despite casting Statler and Waldorf as Scrooge’s former business partners, their tuneful warning of the damnation that awaits him if he follows this path is genuinely chilling, aided by inventive but ghostly images of chains and padlocks. And the Ghost of Christmas Future can lay claim to being the most intimidating muppet of all time, with a towering stature and Grim Reaper-esque design that makes his presence an unsettling one at all times.
Part of the old Victorian yuletide traditions was to tell ghost stories around the holidays. It was considered a time when the membrane between the living and dead was at its thinnest. And part of the thrust of the tale is not just that Scrooge sees the error of his ways, but is also frightened into considering the possibility that his ways are the wrong ones. Regardless of its kid-friendly bent, The Muppet Christmas Carol delivers on that front and shows that it takes the source material seriously.
The same goes for Michael Caine. It would have been unbelievably easy for him to give less than one hundred percent here. Or, he could have mugged his way through the role of Scrooge given his hand-held counterparts, and no one would have looked askance. Instead, he gives the definitive performance of the character, one that captures the repugnance, the fear, and the eventual joy of the character with layered conviction.
There is a menace to the man before his transformation. Beyond his simple callousness, he’s an imposing, ominous figure, rather than a mere grump in the early going. When he’s firmly ensconced in his twilight journey, he reveals a humanity beneath the terror, expressing wonder at what he’s experiencing and affection at others. He’s so convincing as someone who wants to recoil from the pain of regret, who can bear no more of seeing his sins put on display. And despite being a tad shaky vocally, Caine absolutely sells the bearing of a changed man, with an equal and opposite mirth when he realizes he has a second chance.
Caine plays each note to perfection. He could have done half of this, half as well and still made it into the pantheon of memorable, worthy Scrooges. Instead, he commits to every emotion, every scene, without holding back anything. In short, he’s one of few actors who could say the line, “My first job was here. This is Fozziwig’s old rubber chicken factory!” with total sincerity, and make you believe the nostalgia and wistfulness of the character and the moment. And he does.
Somehow, despite being one of only a handful of significant human performers in the film, he’s not the only example of brilliant “casting.” Director Brian Henson and company find clever ways to integrate the Muppets into Dickens’ classic. Kermit the Frog makes for a flawless Bob Cratchit, one who embodies the kind-hearted decency that Scrooge overlooks. Miss Piggy is somehow simultaneously her usual self, still full of self-possessed fire, but also a plausible matriarch of a Victorian family.
As with Caine, The Muppet Christmas Carol could have simply coasted on the pair’s usual dynamic as romantic partners and called it a day. Instead, it gives us a heartrending scene of a stuffed frog and stuffed pig mourning their young son that somehow stands with the best, most affecting renditions of the Cratchits’ loss.
Likewise, Fozzy as the gregarious “Fozziwig”, Statler and Waldorf taking their heckling beyond the grave, Sam the Eagle stepping in as young Scrooge’s headmaster, and Beaker & Honeydew as charitable collectors all fit seamlessly into Dickens’ world with synergistic energy. And the Muppet team makes Victorian London come alive with its collection of felt denizens, using both new and familiar faces to populate the alternatingly gritty and glowing burg with alacrity.
The pièce de résistance, though, is casting Gonzo as Dickens himself, playing the role of narrator, with Rizzo as his excitable sidekick. The pairing between the two is great on its own terms, with a winning comedic double act that could succeed in any setting. It also allows the film to add in some physical comedy for the younger set, without interfering with the story itself.
But it’s also a clever choice because it serves both Dickens’ and Henson’s purposes. As always, the narrator helps orient the story for audiences, and convey context, history, and internal thoughts in a way that makes the tale more accessible for younger viewers. At the same time, though, it’s a way to honor the prose of the source material, plucking many of the author’s best lines and incorporating them into the proceedings in natural ways other adaptations struggle with.
What’s more, it dovetails perfectly with the Muppets’ fourth wall-breaking bent. Commenting on the story mid-stream, going meta with Gonzo correcting Sam’s lines as an English headmaster, and playing around with Gonzo as omniscient while still along for the ride makes The Muppet Christmas Carol not just play like a strong adaptation of the 1843 publication, but also as part and parcel with the Muppets’ wider approach and filmography.
To the same end, Brian Henson follows in his father’s tradition of pushing the boundaries of what puppetry can do and be on screen. From the rats cleaning up Scrooge’s office for Xmas, to Kermit ice skating and carrying his son on his shoulder, to puppet characters emoting without any discernible human intervention, the movie advances its artfrom in cinema in a technical sense as much as it lifts up the material from a storytelling perspective.
The peak of this craft and wizardry, though, comes in the form of the three ghosts who visit Scrooge. I’ve already mentioned the terrifying Ghost of Xmas Future, but all three of the spirits who haunt our hero have an aesthetic impressiveness to match their role in the story. The ethereal Ghost of Xmas Past is at once childlike and unknowable, an embodiment of innocence and swirling light which grabs the eye in each appearance.
The Ghost of Xmas Present, by contrast, makes you constantly aware of the space he takes up, a character who believably grows and shrinks in size, and it's the height of community-minded mirth, a true personification of the season’s best qualities. A full body muppet, with facial articulations that sell his innate friendliness, he’s the perfect example of how the production team’s craft doesn’t just wow on a technical level, but serves the meaning and tone of the story.
It doesn’t hurt that The Muppet Christmas Carol sports the puppet crew’s best collection of songs. It’s no coincidence that this movie also features the return of Paul Williams, who worked on The Muppet Movie and co-wrote “Rainbow Connection”, to the Muppet fold. You’ll tap your toes to the likes of Scrooge’s musical introduction, “One More Sleep Til Christmas”, “Marley and Marley”, and “Feels Like Christmas”. But each of these tunes serves a purpose in the story, communicating moods, tones, and character beats brilliantly. And the call and response of “When Love Is Gone” and “The Love We Found” at the film’s emotional nadir and peak sells the catharsis of Scrooge’s change-of-heart almost as well as Caine does.
There’s just so much going on here. The Muppet Christmas Carol wants to make you laugh. It wants to make you cry. It makes you want to cower behind your couch. It wants to make you feel Scrooge’s pain of regret and feel just as intensely his joy of being able to change his future and do better. So many films struggle to balance different tones and narrative demands, and Dickens’ fable offers adapters no favors in trying to streamline them for a modern audience.
And yet, somehow, the commedia dell'arte figures that Jim Henson and his troupe crafted decades earlier become the perfect caretakers for the story and its message. It’s worth nothing that this was the Muppet team’s first feature film without Jim himself on board. His son, who stepped up to direct, carries on his father’s legacy beautifully, getting the craft, whimsy, and sensibility for this crew just right in the face of a challenging mission.
The Muppet Christmas Carol not only succeeds in that mission, but manages to soar higher than far more traditional and well-heeled approaches to the source material. It walks the tightrope of honoring Dickens’ work while molding it to the needs of these creators and those of their audience. Not every film can make you chuckle at a singing bunch of grapes and make you weep at young parents mourning their child without missing a beat. But the Muppets can, and their alchemy delivers the best “Carol” yet.
