the muppet movie
you can find the whole thing on youtube.
"kermit, does this film have socially redeeming value?"
"oh, i certainly hope so, sam."
i am unabashedly nostalgic. nostalgia gets a lot of flack as an invalid method of determining the quality of something, and i think part of that is that it's entirely personal. no one has identical upbringings, so we're all going to have nostalgia for different things (even for things we have no actual experience with). if you look at the list i submitted for this canon, pretty much every single one of them is there because i had a personal experience with them. they connected with me on some level. nostlagia is one of those levels that many of the films connected with me. i like nostalgia, and i make no bones about it. so when i say that my love of the muppet movie is not born entirely from nostalgia, know that if it were the case, i would own up to it fully.
of course, there's a nostlagic connection, but i fell in love with this movie not as a small child, but when i was in college. i saw it when i was little, but i didn't become a geek for it until much later.
it's a showcase for bad puns, running gags, musical numbers, big cameos (of which the biggest is big bird--orson welles ain't got nuthin' on him), self-aware references, hat tips to hollywood and comedy convetions going back farther than anyone in the intended age group would get, and expert muppetry. it might not mean much to you, but kermit the frog appearing entirely on screen with no obscuring for his body, riding on that bicycle, is amazing, and gonzo with the balloons has its own list of astonishing qualities. the amount of effort they went through to make some of these shots without resorting to obscuring the lower portions of the muppets is extraordinary.
and all of those things combine to reinforce the sense of possibility and wonder ("aurora borealis shining down in dallas") that has endeared the muppets to me since as far back as i can remember (there's that nostalgia again). and i have no doubt that that's exactly what jim henson and company wanted. the amount of detail put into the muppeting has always been impressive--their faces can be very expressive, their movements distinct, their personalities fully formed [by 1979, anyway; let's not count winston's coffee commercials as the height of muppetdom]. the muppeteers knew the value of going the extra mile. so every moment in the film where you find yourself asking "how did they do that? these are hand puppets!" is probably the result of a lot more effort than you expect, all in the name of amazing you.
i don't recall when it was i came to the realization that wonder was what i wanted out of life, and what i wanted to give others in life, but this movie definitely captured that idea. after all, it's about how the muppets all got started, approximately.
"kermit, does this film have socially redeeming value?"
"oh, i certainly hope so, sam."
i am unabashedly nostalgic. nostalgia gets a lot of flack as an invalid method of determining the quality of something, and i think part of that is that it's entirely personal. no one has identical upbringings, so we're all going to have nostalgia for different things (even for things we have no actual experience with). if you look at the list i submitted for this canon, pretty much every single one of them is there because i had a personal experience with them. they connected with me on some level. nostlagia is one of those levels that many of the films connected with me. i like nostalgia, and i make no bones about it. so when i say that my love of the muppet movie is not born entirely from nostalgia, know that if it were the case, i would own up to it fully.
of course, there's a nostlagic connection, but i fell in love with this movie not as a small child, but when i was in college. i saw it when i was little, but i didn't become a geek for it until much later.
it's a showcase for bad puns, running gags, musical numbers, big cameos (of which the biggest is big bird--orson welles ain't got nuthin' on him), self-aware references, hat tips to hollywood and comedy convetions going back farther than anyone in the intended age group would get, and expert muppetry. it might not mean much to you, but kermit the frog appearing entirely on screen with no obscuring for his body, riding on that bicycle, is amazing, and gonzo with the balloons has its own list of astonishing qualities. the amount of effort they went through to make some of these shots without resorting to obscuring the lower portions of the muppets is extraordinary.
and all of those things combine to reinforce the sense of possibility and wonder ("aurora borealis shining down in dallas") that has endeared the muppets to me since as far back as i can remember (there's that nostalgia again). and i have no doubt that that's exactly what jim henson and company wanted. the amount of detail put into the muppeting has always been impressive--their faces can be very expressive, their movements distinct, their personalities fully formed [by 1979, anyway; let's not count winston's coffee commercials as the height of muppetdom]. the muppeteers knew the value of going the extra mile. so every moment in the film where you find yourself asking "how did they do that? these are hand puppets!" is probably the result of a lot more effort than you expect, all in the name of amazing you.
i don't recall when it was i came to the realization that wonder was what i wanted out of life, and what i wanted to give others in life, but this movie definitely captured that idea. after all, it's about how the muppets all got started, approximately.
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