Everyone enjoys the Muppets, and trying to argue against this would be pointless. Everyone who is alive and more or less normal would agree. For this primary reason, it follows that Jim Henson, the creative, the inventor and the father of the entire Muppet project, is also adored. These crayon-coloured series of silly limbs that he invented, a bunch of felt-based marionette-puppets, have taken film and television by storm ever since.
Howard enjoys being more than just a famous actor; if anything, he is a polymath who wears many hats. Muppet fans already know that Howard directed a slew of non-fiction films before getting into the Muppet Adventure, and that he has equal cinematic license between directing and acting in films. Actually, Howard directed just one animated film called The Cube that Henson first got into in 1969, but from this documentary I see that Howard loves throwing in little bits of quick display of visuals alongside animation. Actually, the visuals complement the animated elements perfectly Howard has directed a Muppet Adventure before.
Which is entirely appropriate when the discussion is so engaging and intriguing. As Henson’s associates and his archive videos interview him, he is portrayed as an earnest and soft-spoken individual that possessed “superhuman drive”, an unfettered imagination in both his creative feats and a certain measure of shyness that reveals a “wonderful internal world”, as Frank Oz, Henson’s close aide, describes.
It is that undeniable joy, always at the forefront of Henson’s life and creations, that finds a place in Howard’s film.
This is perhaps, more suitable for correcting the inaccuracies that Henson’s work has been permeated with, as the interviews presented here have been taken from other sources, such as ‘never before’ shown documentary works. There are some highlights too, like Henson’s unconventional appearance on the Orson Welles Show. “Muppetry is as much an artistry and we may forget that,” said Welles, as he sat with Kermit and Fozzie during the filming of the talk show pilot.
A fun aspect of the movies was how Henson’s art reached its peak, as Kermit started off as a piece of fabric stuck to a Kansas coat of his mother, and Rowlf was a half-basketball. Now, contrast these to radios being incorporated into the entertainment in Labyrinth. Even more captivating, are the changes in the tone: a stereotype-defying meat advertisement from the 60s, stars a Muppet who shot another for being a vegetarian, but what became more popular was the ever popular TV series for children that runs till this day, Sesame’s Street, which was never mentioned in this film as its existence is inconceivable.
The discussion while covering several decades happens over two hours, which does not do justice to some events.
Henson’s wife and even his creative collaborator, Jane Henson, on the other hand, is partly in this narrative and for some reason doesn’t get her due here, nor is any painter Nemesia ever quite credited. And alarming and slightly biased is the feel when Morton cuts to archival footage to Henson’s then wife claiming that while pregnant with their son, “Jim felt that I was not anymore, a reliable partner”, as if she had been bundled out of the company. It does however also point out that Henson “in his marriage had stereotypical roles” as one of his daughters puts it, that also made them to part ways in the end. However their children, almost all of them are in the business, reminisce about both parents and it more than evident that there was love in the family.
It is that love and joy which was always there in Henson’s work and life that fits so well in Howard’s film and nearly captures the affectionate anarchy culture (of as Frank Oz puts it) which Henson himself was so fond of creating. If you are alive anyway, the just slightly demented view of Big Bird crooning Sweet nostalgia in green, I wouldn’t say relatively more so from, cherubic tears at the Henson funeral will, the Muppets alone can create.
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