The Mup­pet Movie at 40 – Jim Henson’s fuzzy tes­ta­ment to friendship

Pic­ture the scene: in the bucol­ic Eng­lish coun­try­side, a frog and a bear peek between the branch­es of an old tree. ​“A bear in his nat­ur­al habi­tat,” the fur­ry one observes. Dubi­ous, the green guy replies, ​“You’re not a nat­ur­al bear.” Despite his sta­t­ic fea­tures, the bear tru­ly looks surprised.

His friend per­sists, explain­ing that ​“real” bears have teeth and bones, not fake fur and magen­ta noses. To this, the bear claps back. ​“I’ve got a news­flash for you, kid! You’ve got a wire on your arm!” The frog is aston­ished, mouth agape. ​“I’m sor­ry!” the bear repents. ​“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He adds, sweet­ly, ​“I believe in you.”

In under two min­utes, this dinky bit of improv cap­tures so much of The Mup­pets’ eter­nal charm. It’s got their sil­ly, sur­re­al sense of humour. It show­cas­es Ker­mit the Frog and Fozzie Bear’s whole­some friend­ship (nour­ished by the real-life bond between pup­peteers Jim Hen­son and Frank Oz). And it exem­pli­fies The Mup­pets’ inim­itable knack for bridg­ing fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty – a capac­i­ty that some folks, at the time, still doubted.

In 1978, The Mup­pet Show was an estab­lished inter­na­tion­al hit. How­ev­er, its stars had only appeared on stu­dio sound stages, as seen on TV sets. Ker­mit and Fozzie’s screen test, described above, had to prove two things: that The Mup­pets could blend into real-world envi­ron­ments, and that Henson’s hands-on mag­ic would be just as mes­meris­ing on the big screen. It worked. Before long The Mup­pet gang were rid­ing bikes, dri­ving cars and steal­ing hearts in the first of many fea­ture films.

The Mup­pet Movie opened in the UK on 31 May, sand­wiched neat­ly between The War­riors and Moon­rak­er. Direct­ed by TV jour­ney­man James Fraw­ley, the film recounts Kermit’s voy­age from a Mis­sis­sip­pi swamp to a Hol­ly­wood back­lot, where he and new­found friends Fozzie Bear, Miss Pig­gy, Rowlf the Dog and The Great Gonzo realise their dream of singing, danc­ing and mak­ing peo­ple hap­py. Con­sid­er it an ori­gin sto­ry for the orig­i­nal MCU: the Mup­pet Cin­e­mat­ic Universe.

Well, it’s ​“sort of, approx­i­mate­ly” how The Mup­pets got start­ed, Ker­mit tells his nephew Robin in scene one, at the world pre­mière of their film-with­in-a-film. Over the ensu­ing 90 min­utes, The Mup­pet Movie oscil­lates from fam­i­ly com­e­dy to rol­lick­ing road movie, with psy­che­del­ic songs and genre par­o­dy scenes in between. This eclec­tic approach is core to the troupe’s play­ful­ly sub­ver­sive credo.

From end to end, there’s wit­ty word­play (see: ​‘I Hope That Some­thing Bet­ter Comes Along’), sil­ly sight gags (a lit­er­al fork in the road) and meta ref­er­ences aplen­ty (Dr Teeth reads the screen­play, lat­er used to locate Ker­mit and co). Char­ac­ters fre­quent­ly address the cam­era, and the film ends with jilt­ed Swee­t­ums lit­er­al­ly break­ing the fourth wall – burst­ing through the cin­e­ma screen, shout­ing, ​“I just knew I’d catch up with you guys!”

Forty years on, Jer­ry Juhl and Jack Burns’ post­mod­ern humour occa­sion­al­ly feels out­dat­ed. First-time audi­ences today like­ly won’t recog­nise Mil­ton Berle, Tel­ly Savalas, HB Hag­ger­ty and the mid-cen­tu­ry stars whose effect was sad­ly tem­po­rary. On the oth­er hand, cameo appear­ances from Car­ol Kane, Steve Mar­tin and Orson Welles retain their orig­i­nal appeal and cin­e­mat­ic val­ue, mak­ing the film a fount of nos­tal­gia for many viewers.

But the prac­ti­cal effects remain impres­sive. An $8m bud­get – the equiv­a­lent of more than $31m today – meant that, when it came to movie mag­ic, Henson’s team could shoot for the stars. Actu­al­ly, cre­at­ing a shoot­ing star effect was quite cheap and easy (it’s just a fairy light on a wire). The film fea­tured two reveals that were far more aston­ish­ing. See: Kermit’s feet.

It may seem quaint, even triv­ial now, but in 1979 get­ting a hand pup­pet to dance and cycle with osten­si­ble head-to-toe auton­o­my was a remark­able exploit – Roger Ebert even men­tioned it in his glow­ing review. Though Ker­mit had been cruis­ing (albeit with vis­i­ble wires) since The Mup­pets Valen­tine Show in 1974, here he got upgrad­ed to a full-scale Schwinn, oper­at­ed mar­i­onette-style from a mov­ing crane above.

To set Gonzo sail­ing on a bunch of bal­loons, effects whiz Franz ​“Faz” Faza­kas built a radio-con­trolled stunt dou­ble for the bold, dar­ing… what­ev­er. Hen­son him­self even spent five days under­wa­ter, per­form­ing the singing, ban­jo-strum­ming, full-bod­ied Ker­mit in the unfor­get­table ​‘Rain­bow Con­nec­tion’ sequence.

The tech­nol­o­gy used in The Mup­pet Movie pre­fig­ured Henson’s The Dark Crys­tal, Frag­gle Rock and in his Crea­ture Shop. From the 60-foot ver­sion of Ani­mal to the pint-sized Robin, almost every effect was cap­tured in cam­era, imbu­ing the film with an enchant­i­ng believ­abil­i­ty that holds up today – even in com­par­i­son to some advanced CGI. But all the remote con­trols and stunt vehi­cles in the world can’t make a film com­pul­sive­ly watch­able with­out a strong heart – and, Hen­son might add, an eth­i­cal com­pass – to guide it.

Full of warmth, devoid of cyn­i­cism, The Mup­pet Movie is an earnest tes­ta­ment to friend­ship. Despite their com­plex quirks and fas­ci­nat­ing foibles, The Mup­pets share deep com­mit­ment to their dream and, more­over, to each oth­er. They may look like a felt-and-glue menagerie, but they mod­el joy, grief, con­fu­sion, anx­i­ety, tol­er­ance and for­give­ness – pal­pa­bly human sen­sa­tions – with total sin­cer­i­ty. Maybe it’s only movie mag­ic, but it’s a dream worth believ­ing in.