The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

I’m a big Muppets fan, though I haven’t seen many of their movies.  It’s weird that way, but I thoroughly enjoyed “The Muppet Show” back in the day, and for my money, anything having to do with Muppets will catch my eye.  I’m writing this before the release of The Muppets, so there’s a good chance that my feelings on them could completely turn around depending on how Jason Segel handles the characters.  We’ll see.

Anyways, this is a Muppet adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens’ novel and this is the second time this year I’ve seen a fairly accurate and close rendition of the tale, so I was bored.  I’m sorry, it’s true.  This is one of those stories that really should never be made into a movie again.  You are not going to say anything new with it, it is impossible.  The only new thing you can do with it is what Robert Zemeckis did and that is horrify people.  This movie almost accomplishes that too with the frightening Ghost of Christmas Past, but if we’ve learned anything from Jim Henson projects, it’s that occasionally he will terrify us.

Of note is that this wasn’t directed by Jim Henson, as he had somewhat recently passed away.  This was the first Muppets movie to be made without him, and it definitely shows.  It’s wildly uneven, and as previously mentioned, boring.  The songs aren’t catchy, and while Michael Caine does a great job as Scrooge, it’s a shame that performance wasn’t in a better movie.

2 / 5

A Christmas Carol (2009)

For the life of me, I cannot conceive of an audience that this movie is for.  Immediately upon hearing about the movie I couldn’t think of a single person that would want to see another Jim Carrey Christmas film, let alone one where the filming style was Robert Zemeckis’ horrifying motion capture experiments that he keeps foisting upon people.  WHY make motion capture movies?  Either animate them, or shoot them live action, WHYYYYYYYY MELD THEM IN AN UNHOLY TERRIFYING FASHION?  It is a crime against humanity, and I speak without hyperbole when I say that Zemeckis is a human rights criminal and should be strung up if he continues these mad scientist experiments.

The only way I could recommend this movie to anyone would be in the rare instance where a parent actually wants to terrify their child to the point where they will not fall asleep on Christmas Eve.  Rare?  I don’t think it has nor ever will happen.  It is like a shiny legendary Pokemon, an event so rare that you will wear out your DS power button trying to accomplish it.  It will make you curse Zemeckis for trying  again and again to make his horrible idea accepted by mass audiences.  When Scrooge laughs at the end, his eyes are so dead that you think he’s just fucking with Bob Cratchit and THAT IS UNINTENTIONAL AND NOT THE POINT OF THE SCENE.

Much like Kevin Nash, no matter how many times you repackage him in WCW, until you let him be himself, he will never get over.  So Robert Zemeckis, please, let motion capture animation die.  Just let it be animation.  There is no reason to haunt people with scary Christmas movies.  Oh, and while I’m at it with Christmas wishes, STOP ANY ATTEMPTS TO MAKE Ghostbusters 3.  Thank you, Jesus.

0 / 5