I don’t know why the Muppets love Christmas a lot, however they actually do. Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and the prolonged Muppet forged of characters have made practically a dozen vacation specials, together with a feature-length TV film and a theatrical film. That final one is The Muppet Christmas Carol, one of many best-loved diversifications of Charles Dickens’ story of Ebenezer Scrooge ever made. But I need to speak in regards to the TV film, which isn’t practically as well-known… however much more notorious.

It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie aired on NBC on November 29, 2002, or 20 years in the past at present. Much like The Muppet Christmas Carol, it’s a parody of/homage to a different totally beloved piece of vacation leisure, specifically the Frank Capra-directed, Jimmy Stewart-starring film It’s a Wonderful Life. On paper, it makes all of the sense on this planet; the film is about George Bailey, a person who’s going to lose his household’s Savings and Loan financial institution if he doesn’t have $8,000 by Christmas. He has the cash, however it’s by chance misplaced, and he should determine learn how to exchange it. It’s mainly the identical as one among the Muppets franchise’s favourite plotlines—Kermit and his pals are about to lose their Muppet Theater by a sure date except one thing extraordinary occurs.

So far, so good! But the important thing to It’s a Wonderful Life is that when he loses the cash, George turns into so despondent he’s going to commit suicide earlier than being stopped by his guardian angel, Clarence. In his anguish, George needs he’d by no means been born, and Clarence provides him a imaginative and prescient of what his household, pals, and city could be like with out his existence, and it’s bleak—a lifeless brother, a wife-turned-spinster, an institutionalized uncle, and a city dominated by a monetary despot, Henry Potter, who had demanded the cash initially as a partial member of George’s financial institution’s board of administrators.

If there was a solution to replicate the grim plotline of It’s a Wonderful Life with out the tragedy and melancholy at its core, It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie didn’t determine it out. Bank proprietor Rachel Bitterman (a splendidly mean-spirited Joan Cusack) calls for the Muppets repay their mortgage by Christmas Eve at midnight, or she’ll foreclose the Muppet Theater. A determined Kermit manages to cobble sufficient cash on the final minute to pay her invoice, however when he provides the cash to Fozzie to ship, he loses it on the way in which, prompting Kermit to kind of lose his thoughts as nicely. If you’ve by no means seen Kermit scream about how he needs for his existence to be totally obliterated, it’s one thing to behold:

The individual Kermit is freaking out on is David Arquette, enjoying the frog’s guardian angel Daniel, who in fact exhibits him what the Muppets could be doing if Kermit had by no means come into their lives, and right here’s the place issues actually take a flip for the mind-blowing. I extremely suggest you watch the film and see what Kermit discovers. (If one have been to look on-line for it, and one discovered such a video of it, one may contemplate starting at 1:02:14.) In case you’ll be able to’t legally buy it, let me let you know a couple of of the issues which have occurred in a Kermit-less world:

• Fozzie is a pickpocket
• Miss Piggy pretends to be a Jamaican fortune teller on a 1-900 pay cellphone line
• Rizzo the Rat is pressured to torment contestants on Fear Factor after which be eaten alive
• The Muppet Theater has turn out to be a sleazy nightclub holding raves the place Dr. Honeydew lets folks in, Scooter dances in a cage, and Beaker is a terrifyingly buff bouncer
• Doc Hopper’s Frog Legs quick meals franchise goes nationwide, since Kermit wasn’t there to cease it within the first Muppets movie

It’s about essentially the most surreal 10 minutes of tv I ever hope to observe, however it’s hardly the one insanity occurring in It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. Fozzie leaps and cartwheels by means of a hallway filled with safety lasers. The Boss—an all-powerful equal of God, performed by Whoopi Goldberg—solely decides to research Kermit’s distress as a result of SpongeBob SquarePants isn’t on TV. Pepe the Prawn, in his most interesting efficiency, instantly abandons the Muppets to serve Bitterman’s ft. The Muppets stage a parody model of Baz Luhrman’s film Moulin Rouge, the place Kermit’s tiny nephew Robin performs the inexperienced fairy that comes out of the hallucinatory liqueur absinthe.

Again, that is all within the “normal” timeline, which presumably takes place within the film’s actuality. But the 2002 film’s maddest second belongs within the Kermit-less world, and is totally inadvertent. There, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center might be seen by means of the window of Miss Piggy’s house, indicating that by some means, if Kermit wasn’t alive the 9/11 assaults wouldn’t have occurred, that means Kermit was indirectly accountable. The revelation prompted fairly a stir in 2015, turning into quite the meme. (The fact is the backgrounds of New York City used behind the home windows of the set have been previous and hadn’t been fastidiously checked.)

Perhaps that is the explanation why It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie isn’t obtainable on Disney+—or maybe it’s the frequent NBC jokes made within the particular, since Disney owns competitor ABC. Or maybe it’s how dated it feels, in methods, starring Carson Daly, The Crocodile Hunter’s Steve Irwin, the forged of Scrubs, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Joe Rogan earlier than all of the badness, and extra. But that’s a disgrace, as a result of there’s a extremely enjoyable, black humor to be discovered within the TV film that an excessive amount of Muppet leisure lacks. Sure, Very Merry might be hokey as hell, however in a really Muppets-appropriate means, and that makes the weirdness hit even tougher. I imply, Scooter gyrates in a rave cage:

While It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie isn’t on Disney+, it’s not arduous to search out on DVD and Blu-ray. Or elsewhere, maybe.

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