TCM will be showing The Muppet Movie in theaters on Thursday July 25th and Tuesday July 30th. You can check out the Fathom Events website if you wish to scope out a venue near to you. Also, get ready to be depressed: They are showing it to mark the film’s 40th (!!!!) anniversary. (Also in theaters this month, Easy Rider and Kiki’s Delivery Service. I also really wanted to see Sound Euphonium! The Movie, but OF COURSE the one day the subtitled version is playing is the same day I’m to take my niece to see Godzilla movies for G-Fest.)
The Muppet Movie is pretty great, a legitimate minor classic, I think. The humor ranges from wry and droll to goofier puns and slapstick. The celebrity cameos (Bob Hope! Orson Welles! Steve Martin! Dozens of others!) actually come off as more than just bragging self-indulgence.
The songs are terrific. The Muppet Movie has one of the best ‘books’ of the last 50 years, courtesy of composer Paul Williams. Aside from obvious showstoppers (or more aptly showstarters) like Rainbow Connection and Movin’ Right Along, there are many other extremely good tunes. I’ve always particularly liked Rowlf the Dog’s lounge song I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along. The lyric “You can’t live with ‘em / you can’t live without ‘em / There’s somethin’ irresisitabullish about ‘em” is one of the better attempts to mimic the puckishness of Cole Porter I can think of.
The Muppet Movie also makes me mourn something that films may never provide again. I know I come off as the cranky old man who hates the CGI so popular with the kids these days, and wants it to get off his lawn. That’s not true, though. I have simply loved the MCU movies, and equally obviously those require CGI to be what they are. Indeed, CGI is at the core of those films, along with all the traditional elements like good to great scripts, acting and direction.
So I’m not reflexively against computer effects. They are, however, clearly a completely different thing than make-up and practical effects. This is not a case so much of apples and oranges as apples and bowling balls. The art of cinema has gained great things via computer effects. Inevitably, it has also lost some things.
These things will be mourned mostly by people who grew up in a different age. This is natural, as we judge things by the criteria we developed by what we knew. It’s not so much that the old techniques are better or worse, it’s that they had a flavor to them that modern CGI does not. We prefer the old flavors, while kids prefer the new ones.
Note how youngsters today are often deeply and scornfully dismissive of old monster suits or props on strings (a stab to my heart, every time), but have no real intrinsic problem with bad CGI effects. It’s the bad they grew up with. Good is better than bad, but bad CGI strikes many of them, I’m sure, better than good physical effects, painting and model work.
CGI also promotes a taste for literalism that I think gets in the way of enjoying the less ‘realistic’ results of physical effects work. Basically, as when television replaced radio, you are required to exercise your imagination less. In any case, that particular flavor of ‘fake’ isn’t one the younger viewer has ever developed a taste for. This state of affairs is a constant of the human condition. It happens with every generation, although obviously technology has sped up and spread out the process enormously.
We oldtimers appreciate the strengths of modern effects while, again, mourning the lost advantages (and often the lost deficits) of the old ways. Kids never have known the old ways, and frankly by and large don’t care. There is only the new ways for them. Go peddle your papers, Grandpa.
(Kids still say that, right?)
One primary thing they will never learn is a sense of progress and general amazement. Because old black and white movies and programming was what was cheap for UHF stations back in the day, people of our generation grew up watching stuff from the silent period on up. We grew up with an appreciation of how the ‘50s represented a quantum leap in special effects technology. There was another quantum leap in the ‘70s. “You will believe a man can fly,” the ads promised. It was thrilling.
In its modest way The Muppet Movie was part of that. We all grew up watching puppets, on locally produced kids programming (especially if you lived in Chicago, where powerhouse independent station WGN produced morning shows like Bozo’s Circus and Garfield Goose) and on Sheri Lewis’ syndicated program and, of course, on PBS.
The Muppet Movie opens with Kermit on that log in the swamp, strumming his banjo. Fantastically great puppetry, although not especially mystifying. The log hid the puppeteer, or maybe a pair of them. Maybe they were in scuba suits, or perhaps they built a hidden water-free box for the puppeteer to stand in.
Shortly thereafter, though, we see Kermit riding a bicycle. This wasn’t cheated with a close-up, but put right out there in a nice clean long shot. That shot was basically a great magic trick, and as such seemed designed partly to challenge us to figure out how it was done. Few were able to. ‘How the hell did they do that?,’ the vast majority of us wondered. There was a pure, childlike wonder in that moment. I’ll never forget it, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
Kids don’t have to wonder today. Computers. That’s how they did it. The results may be spectacular, but never mystifying. And it’s hard to explain why that’s important. When someone has never known scarcity or limitations, how do you explain to them the weird, quixotic satisfactions and affections and heightened little triumphs those very limitations sometimes provided?
I think we fear that those who follow us will never hold things in general quite as dearly, because they have no idea what it’s like to do without. And even we feel a bit foolish trying to explain this to them. When they roll their eyes and ask why it was better when the effects were so much more obviously faked, it’s hard to come up with a reasonable answer. We can come up with examples, but not ones that can really convey pleasures that are as abstract as they are precious. It’s a tough sell, even though we love what we’re selling.
Let’s get back on track. Mostly, The Muppet Movie is charming. Hollywood doesn’t do charming very well anymore. The Princess Bride was charming, but that’s a bit of a miracle film. And even that was made 32 years ago now. Hollywood used to have all these stars whose entire essential screen persona was ‘charming;’ Cary Grant, William Powell, Fred Astaire, Myrna Loy, Carol Lombard, etc. I don’t know that that’s true of any actor today.
The pixyish actresses described as “adorkable” are probably the closest thing to it. Yet note that while the ‘charming’ stars of that bygone era were paragons of sophistication, all tuxedos and evening gowns and Cole Porter-esque badinage, the newest crop is quite the opposite. It’s right there in the ‘adorkable’ moniker.
Charm, which again is an abstract quality, is thus also something that you largely lose through CGI. A computer generated Kong is (if done well) more lifelike and awe-inspiring than Willis O’Brien’s. Suspension of disbelieve is cheaply bought now because there’s so little to suspend. The same is true of a gorgeously designed and thrillingly elaborate CGI establishing shot of a fantasy or sci-fi city. A computer animated object or vehicle also exhibits these traits.
However, those are benefits we have gained. The tradeoffs are the loss of the charm and, weirdly, humanity of a stop-motion Kong or a terrific matte painting or a wonderful hand-crafted prop. Certainly no one reading this is unaware of how generations of kids used to passionately fall in love with monsters, largely because of the way they were realized. Do many kids fall in love with modern monsters in the same way? I think not. No, there is something about the feel of an object fashioned by human hands that can never truly be replicated by the manipulation of pixels.
Anyway, I like The Muppet Movie. If it’s your bag, take your kids or your nephews or nieces or any youngster, really.
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