I might have mentioned it somewhere on here before but I love A Christmas Carol. Like it’s my favourite book kind of love. I read it every year during the holidays, I’ve seen it performed as both public reading and professional theatrical performance, I’ve seen most film versions of it and a good number of parodies, it’s a story that has never gotten old to me.
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And like many people, my introduction to it came through The Muppet Christmas Carol, or a rather a childrens’ book version of the story illustrated through frames from the movie (it would actually be a number of years into my love of the story that I would actually see the film). I remember it well, my first image of Bob Crachit was Kermit, Fezziwig was Fozzie, the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future were those curious looking Muppet versions. And Scrooge was this gray-haired chap I’d later come to know as Michael Caine. Some of those shots and impressions even imprinted on me when I came to the actual story years later. It took a few readings to reconcile the idea that Jacob Marley was one figure not two. Eventually though, the magic of the story completely took hold of my perception of it, but in some way I will always be indebted to the Muppets for getting me there in the first place.
The Muppet Christmas Carol came out in December of 1992, the fourth entry in the Muppets’ theatrical film franchise and the first to come following the death of Jim Henson two years earlier. It was also the directing debut of Jim’s son Brian Henson. Unlike the previous three Muppet movies, which had their own adventure narratives based around the Muppet characters, The Muppet Christmas Carol played as more like a sketch off the Muppet Show, with the various Muppet players putting on a production of a classic story, albeit without any behind the scenes antics. It was a straight-up adaptation, just done in a Muppet-y way. And maybe because it had been a while since the Muppets had done something like this, or just a crowded market (it released within the immediate window of Aladdin and Home Alone 2, and the same weekend as A Few Good Men), it didn’t do terribly well at the box office. It wasn’t a bomb, but it was hardly a hit either. Still, the reception was ultimately good enough that the template was repeated a few years later for Muppet Treasure Island.
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Of course, Christmas films have a way of sticking around, regardless of reception or quality, for the mere fact that they are easy sells both on home video and in syndication during the holiday season. As I discussed last year, it’s likely what has accounted for the enduring popularity of Elf. The Muppet Christmas Carol, which has a decade on Elf, has permeated many a holiday season over these last twenty-nine years to the point no one would know it was ever unsuccessful. And among millennials and Gen-Zers especially, growing up with its’ comforts every year, it has become more than the de-facto version of A Christmas Carol, it has become the only version that matters. And with each year that people sing its’ praises, social media falling in love with it, and “joke” memes circulating about how much of a better experience it is than reading the book, I find myself resenting the movie more and more.
Now just to be clear before the pitchforks come out: I like The Muppet Christmas Carol! Taken on its’ own and without all the baggage it’s been afforded as a holiday classic, I enjoy it quite a bit -as I enjoy any decent version of A Christmas Carol. It’s got a very warm aesthetic, it’s sweet to look at, the songs by Paul Williams are charming, the Muppet characters are for the most part nicely cast, and the movie is a lot more faithful to the book in its’ writing than it needed to be (the bits where Gonzo as Charles Dickens/audience surrogate quotes directly some of the lines that otherwise couldn’t be translated are wonderful). It’s a pretty well put-together movie and perhaps even one of the best Muppet movies. But that doesn’t change the fact I’m beginning to tire of it -the way I tire of Hocus Pocus around Halloween, and especially Nightmare Before Christmas around both holidays. No movie has been more a victim of overplay than Nightmare Before Christmas, and I’m starting to feel that way about The Muppet Christmas Carol.
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By overplay I’m not talking in old terms of TV syndication of course. This movie played a lot in syndication, but nobody has cable anymore anyways. But in online spaces, it takes up a sizeable chunk of real estate this time of year that’s only beaten by maybe Jim Carrey’s Grinch movie (which I can’t tell how ironic people are being for reclaiming that piece of trash) and the favourite Christmas movie of every Bro who doesn’t like Christmas, Die Hard. And ultimately, The Muppet Christmas Carol is certainly better than those alternatives; but more and more I’m seeing that it clouds folks’ ideas of what A Christmas Carol is, and seems to be as far as their relationship to that text, one of the greatest of the last few centuries, goes. A Christmas Carol is a story that has been retold so many times and in so many interesting ways over the last 178 years. Yet why do so many peoples’ curiosities stop at this one children’s movie version from 1992.
The Muppet Christmas Carol is a great Baby’s First Christmas Carol. It does an excellent job introducing you to the basic characters, themes, plot, structure, and story of Dickens’ novella and translating it all in a way that appeals to modern family entertainment standards. And as I stated earlier, it even goes a step beyond what it needed to do with respect to adaptation. It’s a cute movie, and that’s perfectly okay, but it isn’t a whole lot more. Any charm that it has comes way more from the Muppet characters than from anything to do with the story of A Christmas Carol -which is a shame, because it’s a pretty charming story, even around the miserliness of its’ principal character.
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And on that subject, I might as well just rip the band-aid off: Michael Caine is not a very good Scrooge, and it accounts for a lot of the mediocrity in the movie. Scrooge is the essential, driving force of the narrative, so in any adaptation, a poor Scrooge is going to bring down everything else. The Muppet Christmas Carol however is strong enough in other respects that it can equalize the shortcomings in this department, and Caine’s Scrooge isn’t terrible; but it does stand out to me and has since pretty much the first time I watched this movie. Michael Caine is a wonderful actor and has been wonderful in many things before and since, so it’s kind of unfortunate that this and playing Alfred in Nolan’s Batman movies has become what he’s best known for to a lot of folks of my generation and younger -because frankly, they’re not great barometers of his talents.
Caine’s Scrooge is introduced with an elaborate musical number by all the Muppets about how mean and cheap and cruel of a man he is, and when we see him at his business, he’s just kind of irritable. I don’t buy for a second that this Scrooge is serious when he talks back to his nephew about the virtues of Christmas, he doesn’t seem all that malicious towards his staff. I think about how harsh and cold the figure was described in the book, how intimidating and forceful a presence he is, and Caine just doesn’t bring that. A lot of people bring up the fact that Caine treated the Muppets as serious co-stars as some proof of his professionalism and dedication (even though that’s essentially been the philosophy of every human performer acting opposite Muppets), but at least in the early goings that dedication isn’t really palpable. He plays Scrooge as though he’s in a community theatre production, which might be the intent given the aesthetic of the Muppets, it just doesn’t translate to a terribly inspired performance. There’s no sense of the gradual evolution in his character either -he seems just about repentant the moment Statler and Waldorf Marley appear. His emotional reckonings throughout his time with the spirits don’t really hit either (though of course I can’t speak for the “When Love is Gone” song, cut from most home video and syndicated versions).
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Seemingly the only times in the movie where he is comfortable are when he is showing Scrooge’s redeemed side -glimpses of it when with the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, and in a big form in the end, where his inclination towards geniality shows through. His Scrooge at the end is pretty good and far more believable than anywhere else in the film; he plays it somewhere decently between the jubilation of Alistair Sim and the warm, quiet humility of George C. Scott and it works. Shame he couldn’t get the other nuances of the character right.
Additionally, there are certain essential components of the Christmas Carol story that must be left out for the sake of the films’ runtime and target audience, that people who only know this Muppet version of the story are missing out on -in fact it may even imply a much simpler tale than the book actually is. Dickens’ text has an explicit social message that is illustrated recurringly through exceptional metaphors and grave sincerity. It’s not merely about Scrooge going from bad to good, it’s about forcing him to confront his participation in the proliferation of systemic injustice and inequity. Scrooge isn’t a cartoon character rich man who sneers down at the suffering and impoverished, he avoids them entirely. His line about the destitute just dying so as to “decrease the surplus population” is immediately followed up by his clarification that he “doesn’t know that”. He prefers to remain ignorant about where this “surplus” is and of course Ignorance, as the Ghost of Christmas Present points out, inevitably leads to doom. Specific comments like this on the nature of Scrooge’s character, how he is a creation of power structures that he describes as “the even handed dealing of the world”, and benefits from a tacit, incurious attitude and unwillingness to learn, emphatically relevant today as ever, cannot be expressed in the context of a Muppet show -these themes must be marginalized for just the base message that being charitable is good.
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One of my favourite aspects of the book is the relationship between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present, who are framed as ideologically adversarial at times -Scrooge will challenge the spirit on its’ values, the spirit will in turn deliver blunt, harsh moralizing -in a couple spots using Scrooge’s own words against him. My favourite Christmas Carol adaptations are the ones that take the effort to translate this, Edward Woodward and George C. Scott do it magnificently in the ‘84 film! And consequently, this Ghost in the Muppet version, watered down to the point of being virtually unrecognizable, is one of my least favourite parts of the movie. That chapter is the longest in the book, but in this film it feels the shortest –much of the texture and feeling of that stage of Scrooge’s story is lost (and I’m sorry but “It Feels Like Christmas” is a very shallow song). The decrepit children Ignorance and Want are perhaps the most glaring omission, likely due to being perceived as both too scary and too heavily metaphorical for young audiences, but something is unquestionably lost in removing that dramatic capper to Scrooge’s time with this spirit. It is Dickens’ most righteously aggressive moment in the book, condemning not only the failings of man to care for and acknowledge the less fortunate, but those who would disdain the truth of it or knowing that truth, consciously exploit it: “slander those who tell it ye, admit it for your factious purposes and make it worse –and bide the end!”
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Obviously that’s some heavy messaging, and some heavy incrimination of the audience for a Muppet film designed to make you feel good about yourself. I’m not really begrudging its’ absence all that much for the sake of the movies’ tone –but it does leave the story just a touch hollower; as do the removals of scenes like the wandering spirits desperate to help the homeless, that touch on Christmas in far humble corners from northern mines to a lighthouse to a cargo ship, or the glimpse of one of the poor family’s deep in debt to Scrooge. That’s another thing, the level of Scrooge’s vindictiveness and cheapness isn’t effectively translated –it’s not all down to Caine’s performance either. There’s no mention of how he callously did business on the day of his partner’s funeral, no real suggestion of how prideful he is about turning away the charitable gentlemen, or the ghastly circles he walked in. Mrs. Crachit’s disgust of him doesn’t feel sincere because it’s a Miss Piggy joke. There are those moments where he tries to defend himself against the Ghost of Christmas Present or catch him out in a hypocrisy. Conversely, the traumas Scrooge undergoes are downplayed too. Aside from Ignorance and Want, there’s of course the loss of Belle, which is played nicely –but the real stinger where Scrooge sees her happily married to another man who comments pitifully on how alone in the world Scrooge is, is nowhere to be found. Scrooge never comes face to face with the dead body when with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come -all that remains is that final critical reveal. His arc in general just seems if not incomplete, a little shallow.
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There’s reason for this of course. Scrooge isn’t the central feature of The Muppet Christmas Carol –the Muppets are. As much as people have a fondness for Caine’s Scrooge, I’d venture a lot of that comes through his proximity to the Muppets and that if he were headlining a straighter version of the story, nobody would care. Similarly, any number of actors could have filled his shoes for this one (I would have quite liked to see runner-up Ron Moody do it). The delights of The Muppet Christmas Carol rest in Kermit, in Gonzo and Rizzo, in Statler and Waldorf, in that bit where Sam Eagle plays the schoolmaster (who incidentally in an all-Muppet production would have been the ideal Scrooge). As showcases for them it is great. But A Christmas Carol is the story of Scrooge and that story comes secondary in this film version. There is actually another kids’ version of A Christmas Carol, produced by the same company, that is even more truncated, not nearly as close adaptation-wise, but yet I like better: Mickey’s Christmas Carol. That 1983 gorgeously animated short film doesn’t touch on nearly as much (in fact it adapts the bare minimum), and yet it consistently has a stronger impact on me. And a part of that comes from, the title notwithstanding, Scrooge being the focus of the piece.
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With regards to The Muppet Christmas Carol though, what is the point in me venting all this? I wonder whether I’m being too harsh on a film that I generally like, but just feel is significantly flawed and overexposed. I think it comes down to the power and scope of A Christmas Carol itself. It’s like Shakespeare honestly, in that it’s been redone so many times and in so many ways –and that itself is wonderful. I love that A Christmas Carol as a narrative is arguably overexposed, and I don’t honestly mind deviations from the source (that said there are some that miss the point completely). It’s that abiding affection I have for the story and what it means, how profound and inspiring it is, that it disappoints me how people will limit themselves to just one interpretation of it –and an interpretation that is very limited in spite of its’ virtues. Throughout this piece I’ve highlighted parts of the story that don’t appear in The Muppet Christmas Carol as a reminder of how much more there is to the story than those who know only that version are aware.
Ideally folks should watch other adaptations: The Alistair Sim and George C. Scott versions are about as good as their reputations (the latter is my personal favourite); though it may require seeking out, the Patrick Stewart version from 1999 is pretty strong and authentic to the books’ text and themes, and in the realm of animation there’s none better than the 1971 Richard Williams short that you can find on youtube. I’d also encourage people to support theatre productions where they can, and hell watch those TV parodies –Blackadder’s Christmas Carol is still a riot! Most of all though, far from being dry and dated, the book has stood the test of time extraordinarily well and remains by far the best means to experience this story –it also bears repeating that it is a short book, and in unabridged form can be read in its’ entirety in under three hours. The themes and atmosphere, the tenderness and raw emotion is just as resonant as it ever was and ever will be. It’s a book that changed my life and I know it has the capacity to change others’ so long as they’re willing to give it the chance. So this year, instead of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol for the 100th time, maybe for a change endeavour to take Gonzo Dickens’ advice from the end of the movie, indeed perhaps the part of the movie I love best, and read the book.
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