The Muppet Christmas Carol [DVD]

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with funny 10-year retrospection from the three participants. With an irreverent tone and genuine insider insight (including some footage of the Muppeteers performing under the specially-built planks), this was a great and memorable featurette. It would have been a better and more relevant inclusion than the new Pepe Profiles piece and most Muppet fans would surely rather have this ported over than yet another cropped presentation of the movie. It's also disappointing that the film's original theatrical trailer wasn't included this time around either, because obviously it's sitting in Disney vaults and is free from any rights issues that might plague trailers for the Disney-acquired Muppet films. Kermit's 50th Anniversary Editions: Muppet Treasure Island (1996) • The Muppet Movie (1979) • The Great Muppet Caper (1981) Mostly what this means is that I’m not coming into this conversation with any long-standing nostalgia for the movie, or any internal meter about what constitutes the “right” version. It doesn’t feel weird and out of place to my ears the way, say, the lost Wizard of Oz musical number “ The Jitterbug” did when the preservationists first found and released the footage. You’re much more of a Muppet Christmas Carol vet than I am, Susana — did that affect your opinion here?

Tasha: It’s only a few minutes! It isn’t that long! And it’s just about our last touchpoint for young, emotional Scrooge before his heart hardened. So he’s the focus here, not his minimally developed love interest! It’s just also that I object to “When Love Is Gone” on the grounds of what makes a good musical. The song itself isn’t all that good, is performed stiffly, and is staged uncreatively, but more than that, it takes the viewer on an overlong detour with a character we barely know and who is about to leave the narrative entirely — marking it as a real outlier in a field of absolute banger musical sequences. The song was included for subsequent American video releases and TV airings of the movie prior to the 2012 Blu-Ray edition, which only includes the theatrical cut albeit with a different edit of the sequence. This version of the film has since aired on ABC Family and was released theatrically in 2020. The song is also removed in the UK and Region 2 DVD release. The issue of this cut was discussed by director Brian Henson in the film's DVD audio commentary recorded in 2002 (again, except on the UK DVD release, which omits the commentary as well). The scene was included as an extra when the film was released in the iTunes Store, and on Disney+ in 2019. Brian Henson announced at D23 Expo 2022 that starting on December 11, 2022 (exactly 30 years to the release date), the song would be reinstated into the film on Disney+ for the first time in high definition. This version of the movie was released two days early on December 9 under the "extras" section. Finally, Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a silent entity who reveals the chilling revelation that young Tiny Tim ( Robin) will not survive the coming year, thanks in no small part to the impoverished existence of the Cratchit family. Furthermore, it is revealed that when Scrooge's own time has passed, others will certainly delight in his absence from the world. Upon seeing his headstone in the cemetery, it is the final epiphany that convinces Scrooge to change his ways and makes him vow to celebrate with his fellow man.

Susana: Bluntly, I think the whole scene needed to have been rethought before it was ever filmed. There’s the whole thing about how we are not invested in Belle and will not see her again the very moment the music ends on this song. But I have a lot more questions: I did a lot of searching to find this, since it seems there's only one DVD version out there that has the full, uncut version of this movie - the one with both full-screen and wide screen options. In the other versions, Disney cut the song "When Love is Gone", apparently because they thought that small children "wouldn't be able to handle it." (And yet they had no problems with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, which honest to God looks like a dementor...) Well, I have to say, when I was a small child "When Love is Gone" didn't upset me at all; it went right over my head. Now that I'm in my 20s, I can appreciate it as a beautiful piece of music, a pivotal moment in the movie and Scrooge's growth, and a melody that ties the plot together. So I am very happy that this version includes this wonderful song. The trio of ghosts are, of course, The Ghost of Christmas Past (a floating girl apparition), The Ghost of Christmas Present (a large, absent-minded red-bearded man who occasionally sounds like ALF), and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (an eerie, silent, faceless being). By showing Scrooge what has happened, is happening, and will happen, they illustrate how wrong he has been treating those around him and just where such behavior will get him - a death mourned by no one. Only one supplement from the film's first DVD release has not been presented here, but it's a substantial one. "Frogs, Pigs, and Humbug: Unwrapping a New Holiday Classic" was a (then) newly-produced 22-minute making-of featurette hosted by Brian Henson, Gonzo, and Rizzo. It combined on-set interview clips with Michael Caine and some of the Muppet performers

The bonus short "Gonzo: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Weirdo" is also great and hilarious! Read full review A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008) • The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005) • Jim Henson's Dog City: The Movie Susana: See, now this is an interesting flip. I’ve basically never seen the movie without that scene, given that I was in elementary school when it was in theaters. It was not actually clear to me until just now that Katzenberg excised the entirety of that character beat. That was an extremely dumbass thing of him to do. And it makes me doubly glad that Disney Plus has restored it. Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment • A Very Playhouse Disney Holiday • Disney Channel Holiday

For this 50th Anniversary DVD, Disney has recycled the animated menus from the studio's initial DVD release of The Muppet Christmas Carol. That's just fine because they're quite inspired and much more fun than your typical DVD menu. Kermit hosts the screen and tries to get you to make a selection if you begin waiting. Of course, his antics are more likely to encourage you to NOT make a selection and instead watch him grow mildly frustrated. That's the point. Aside from the new EasyFind menu icons, different highlighting cursors, and the obvious menu revisions/additions, they're exactly like the previous DVD, which for once, is a good thing. But none of this is what I was expecting a longtime Muppet Christmas Carol fan to object to — here I thought most people who wanted this song gone would just feel like it was out of place in a movie full of Muppets to have a dramatic, melancholy, Muppet-less number, with two humans navigating their extremely rudimentary love story, and not a puppet in sight. Is that in your calculus at all when you think about cutting this scene? What are your big objections here? Songs: "Scrooge", "Good King Wenceslas", "One More Sleep 'Til Christmas", "Marley and Marley", When Love is Gone", "It Feels Like Christmas", "Christmas Scat", "Bless Us All", "Thankful Heart", "When Love is Found/It Feels Like Christmas" Personally, I think this is the best Christmas movie I own, maybe even the best Christmas movie ever. The costumes are period-accurate, the humor is generation-spanning, and the emotional message is perfectly clear without being pretentious as so many movies are these days.

This is the first of the Muppet movies in which the focus of the story revolves around characters played by human beings. However, several pivotal roles -- in particular, the three Christmas Spirits -- were portrayed by specially-created Muppet characters. It was at one time considered that well-known Muppets would be cast in these roles (Piggy, Scooter, and Gonzo, specifically) before it was decided that it would detract from the ominous effect the spirits would need to convey. [3] If you enjoyed the Muppet Show in the 1980's or any of the Muppet movies that have been released like "Muppets from Space" or "Muppet Treasure Island", you will thoroughly enjoy this adaptation. Guaranteed, the children will. Read full review As one would hope for any discrete scene in a movie, there are a lot of things that “When Love Is Gone” does for Muppet Christmas Carol, as you say, not least introducing a musical motif that is reprised in the very final moments of the film. If nothing else, it should be included in any release of the movie for the sake of preservation. These are things I believe wholeheartedly. The Muppet Christmas Carol to the screen were longtime head writer of "The Muppet Show" Jerry Juhl (penning the screenplay), original Muppeteer Frank Oz (serving as executive producer), and Jim Henson's son Brian (as producer and making his feature film directorial debut). Susana: I’d honestly never really thought about it that way — for a long time it’s just been the place in the movie that I’d get up to pee or grab another cookie and a hot chocolate refill, so I’m really enjoying this alternative perspective.At last, The Muppet Christmas Carol is treated to a 16x9-enhanced widescreen transfer in the ratio it was originally seen in, 1.85:1. This presentation is a thing of beauty. It offers a vast improvement over the previous DVD release and praiseworthy color, contrast, and sharpness. The print is not quite immaculate but close to it and any imperfections are extremely minor. In short, it's everything you hoped for three years ago and probably even better thanks to advances in compression technique. Many fans have found new reasons to complain about this DVD release. First, there was the inaccurate press release Disney issued claiming the four films would be presented exclusively in fullscreen. Once that was corrected and the discs' specifications clarified, a new issue arose. For all of Muppet Christmas Carol's previous home video releases, an extended cut of the film was presented. This included the 3-minute musical number "When Love is Gone", performed by Belle to Scrooge as a young man (with the elderly miser listening in). Why is the visual staging of this solo number so unutterably boring? She never even takes her hands out of her cute little Victorian muff. [ Ed. note: While gathering images to lay out this post I discovered that Belle is actually not wearing a muff at all, she just keeps her hands so still and pinned to her stomach for the whole song that I Mandela Effect-ed one into existence. I am noting this in case you too believed that Belle was a muff-wearer.] Why on earth wasn’t this number designed to be a shared song between Belle, young Scrooge, and older Scrooge from the get-go? We can still culminate with Belle and Present Scrooge harmonizing — that’s perfect and I have no notes.