31 Movies of May, Day 6: The Muppet Christmas Carol
May 6th viewing: The Muppet Christmas Carol, selected by Chicago Cinema Workers Fund donor Sam Witthuhn, who apparently follows Mr. Fozziwig’s general philosophy on Christmas (“I love these annual Christmas parties. I love them so much, I think we’ll do it twice a year”). Sam donated extra money for me to do a shot of Malört during the screening, which tasted like the wax fruit Rizzo mistakenly thinks is real at Fred & Clara’s Christmas party.
Year of Release: 1992
Directed by: Brian Henson
Written by: Jerry Juhl (based on the novel by Gonzo the Gr.. er, Charles Dickens)
Starring: Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, Frank Oz, Jessica Fox, Steven Mackintosh, Robin Weaver
Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Downtown IPA (IPA, 6% ABV) - Marz Community Brewing Co., Chicago, Illinois
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)
One of my favorite Internet pastimes is the recurring game of “Replace All the Actors in a Movie with Muppets Except One.” So far as I know, nobody has thought up a more concise name for it, but it goes semi-viral every several months or so. The idea, if you didn’t get it from the very long winded title, is to pick a movie where it would be fun to recast the entire project with Muppets in all of the key roles, except for one specific person. My general go-to pick has always been Reservoir Dogs (keep Steve Buscemi), though as you can tell from any post where this game pops up, there are several recurring favorites.
But this game likely wouldn’t exist if not for Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, the idea human performance in a Muppet movie by which all others must be measured. Of course, Caine wasn’t the originator of this type of Muppet movie role. The whole concept has its roots in The Muppet Show’s practice of having a single human guest star, and the first Muppet movies had followed similar formulas. Charles Durning served as the primary antagonist of The Muppet Movie, and Charles Grodin turned in a memorable performance as a jewel thief in The Great Muppet Caper. But both Durning and Grodin, as well as Tim Curry in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island, heighten their performances at least marginally to adjust for the fact that they are taking on the ridiculous task of acting against felt. I don’t mean that as a criticism - the Muppets as a whole heavily incorporate a level of meta-awareness, so Durning and Grodin are just meeting the Muppets on their level.
What the “Replace All Actors in a Movie with Muppets Except One” game (I’m just going to call it the “Replace with Muppets” game, for sanity purposes) trades on, however, is the natural hilarity resulting from the contrast of hyper-seriousness and Muppet zaniness. And in this regard, Michael Caine is absolutely unmatched. He knows no peers and likely never will meet an equal.
Every single moment of Caine’s performance in The Muppet Christmas Carol feels like it was transported from some different, much more traditional adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and I mean that in the absolute best way. There is very little separating Caine’s performance here from Alastair Sim’s classic portrayal of the character in 1951 - if anything, Caine’s more modern, measured sensibility leaves the character feeling more dour and grounded. Never once does it appear that Caine is acting opposite anything else besides an honest-to-God, flesh-and-blood human being. And this incredible commitment to the bit might be the key driver of The Muppet Christmas Carol’s greatness.
Smartly, the Muppets team places most of the humor of the film around its edges, letting the natural absurdity of Muppets in Victorian-era London work its magic without stretching it or overwhelming it with more forceful gags. Other than the use of Rizzo in an audience surrogate role, or perhaps the always feisty Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit, most of the Muppets slide into the Dickens world fairly naturally without calling undue attention to the fact that they are, well, Muppets, and, more importantly, pre-existing characters with traits and personalities that exist outside of this story. Even Gonzo, a Muppet predicated specifically on his weirdness even in relation to other Muppets, plays his narrator role incredibly straight, relaying Dickensian prose with genuine earnestness. All of this lets gags like the Swedish Chef catering the Fozziwig Christmas party, or Beaker as a mono-syllabic charity solicitor, pop all the more.
Still, the glue holding it all together is Caine. The character of Scrooge has one of the most famous character arcs in all of English literature - perhaps THE most famous character arc in English literature - and in order for the story to work, you need to believe Scrooge has really changed by the end. Caine achieves that beautifully by gradually allowing his stone facade to drop, and the stark realism of his performance makes every adjustment in his mindset all the more easy to relate to the audience.
If you look at many of the most common suggestions in the Replace with Muppets game, you’ll see a lot of them are performances that are famous for their seriousness. Hugo Weaving in The Matrix is a common suggestion, as is Alan Rickman in virtually anything. The other broad category is people delivering devilishly charismatic performances that stand apart in a large ensemble cast - Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, Val Kilmer in Tombstone. Both of these really just show that we want to replicate the brilliant work of Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, a performance of serious artistic caliber that nonetheless manages to stand out from its wackier surroundings. Michael Caine’s Scrooge is the gold standard for Muppet-adjacent acting, and I can only hope that when we get our Muppet remake of Reservoir Dogs, Steve Buscemi will be even half as good.
