It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie: Where the Muppets Jumped the Shark

From the 1970s through the 1990s, the Muppets starred in a variety of wonderful Christmas specials filled with their trademark charm and wit. Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, The Christmas Toy, and Muppet Family Christmas were among the best of the bunch. This magic extended to the big screen, where The Muppet Christmas Carol proved that these lovable puppets had not yet lost their appeal in spite of the death of their creator, Jim Henson. It seemed that when it came to anything Christmas-related, and anything else in general, the Muppets could do no wrong...until 2002, when It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie premiered on NBC. Having loved the Muppets since childhood, I was looking forward to what I hoped would be another wonderful classic starring these lovable characters. Instead, I was witness to the Muppets doing the unthinkable: jumping the shark.

The saga takes place as Christmas is approaching, with the Muppets running their theater from the Muppet Show. However, this place filled with many great memories is in terrible danger: a wicked banker by the name of Rachel Bitterman, as portrayed by Joan Cusack, wishes to have the theater to herself. The only way to save the theater is for the Muppets to put on a special Christmas show and collect enough money to pay Bitterman in order to keep it intact. However, when she moves up the time that the cash is due, and the Muppets arrive too late to make the payment, all seems lost. It becomes the saddest Christmas for the Muppets, especially for Kermit, who feels like he is no good anymore, and ponders what it would be like if he had not been born.

This cues the inevitable parody of It's a Wonderful Life, as David Arquette, as an angel, sends Kermit to an age where he never existed. It is there he learns that had he never been born, his friends would have become much worse off, the theater would have been destroyed, and life in general would be miserable. Seeing the error of his wish, Kermit returns to the world in which he does exist, and he and the other Muppets rally to save their theater before Mrs. Bitterman can take control of it for good.

If all this sounds like a sentimental holiday story, it turns out to be anything but what a great holiday movie or special should be like. For one thing, the film relies too much on celebrity cameos and starring roles. Yes, there are talented people such as Cusack, Whoopi Goldberg, and William H. Macy who appear in the movie, but they tend to upstage the Muppets so much that the latter characters effectively become guest stars in their own movie. This has become a problem with various Muppet productions in recent years: too much focus on celebrities, not enough focus on the Muppets. Jim Henson would have at least given them equal prominence. Add the fact that some of the stars were used to promote various NBC shows, and you get blatant product placement, which is another thing that Henson would have never allowed.

In the world without Kermit, the Muppets not only become worse off, but they are turned into the types of characters that Henson would have never wanted them to become. Fozzie as a pickpocket! Miss Piggy as a psychic! Sam the Eagle working at a night club! Rizzo on Fear Factor! Effectively, every bit of charm that the characters once had go down the drain in this alternate universe. Making people worse off to show how they would have been like if someone else had not entered their lives is a good concept, but the execution here is sickening and sad.

In the past, Muppet parodies of pop culture were clever, inspired, and quite funny; and Henson made sure that they did not overstay their welcome. In this film, the parodies come quite fast and furious. Aside from It's a Wonderful Life, we also have parodies of Moulin Rouge, Star Wars, The Grinch, and even Japanese action movies, complete with bad lip syncing. While some of them are kind of amusing, others fall a bit flat, and having too many of them leaves little room for some original creative moments. Keeping the pop culture references to a minimum might have made the movie a bit more tolerable.

My biggest gripe about the film, however, is the ending. When Pepe the prawn manages to make the theater a national landmark, thus preventing Bitterman's plans from coming to fruition, how does she react? Does she see the error of her evil ways? Does she turn over a new leaf a la Ebeneezer Scrooge or the Grinch, realize the true meaning of the holiday season, and promise to be a better person to the Muppets? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Instead, she simply declares her hatred of the Muppets and storms off, with no hint whatsoever that she has learned her lesson. The Muppets may have gotten their theater back, and their Christmas holiday has been saved, but the inability of Bitterman to have a change of heart becomes the nadir of the entire movie. Henson surely would have found a way to make her a better person at the end, and not keep her selfish ways intact.

The reason why I think this film is where the Muppets jumped the shark is that it, and subsequent productions, suffer from many of the problems that I have stated. The Muppet Wizard of Oz was mediocre at best, as was the Letters to Santa special last year. The Muppets's downhill spiral had been slow in the first decade since Henson's passing. At first, there were still a lot of wonderful productions to come from the Henson company. Muppet Treasure Island had some clever ideas, while Muppets from Space had some early warning signs of bad things to come for the lovable puppets. When It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie came along, however, the Muppets would never be the same. Without their creator, and with many other Muppeteers such as Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Richard Hunt either deceased or having moved on to other things and only performing their characters on a limited basis if at all, the Muppets' glory days are effectively over. If you want to see the movie and find out just how bad it has become for the Muppets, be my guest. If you would rather see the Muppets in much better form, check out practically anything with them in it from the 1990s or earlier and keep far away from this sorry excuse of a holiday movie, which would surely have never been conceived in Henson's time.