Dirk Gently (TV) episode #4 of 4, AKA "Episode 3"

*** Contains spoilers ***

MacDuff: "Well maybe I've grown up a little bit Dirk! Maybe I see through you! I'm getting a little tired of covering for you. Paying bills for you. Getting arrested. For you."

Gently: "Well… I can assure you it's all… very much appreciated…"

MacDuff: "It's not though is it. Really? It's not. Words like 'appreciated', 'thankyou', its little tricks for you. You just wheel 'em out whenever you need to, but you don't really mean 'em. Not really. It's just grease to keep things movin' along and you know what? When it was just me? Getting dumped on? That's f… I can handle that. But someone is killing our clients Dirk. People are dying. And there you are you're just… just doing the same little dance you've always done. You know what? I [don't] wanna watch it any more."

Well, I wouldn't mind.

Yes it's official, I actually think Dirk Gently is worth watching after all!

In this final case he gets hired to track down a stalker, which ought to be quite simple when you factor in that said binocular wielding snooper is in fact Dirk himself.

Well, nothing in Dirk's world is ever straightforward, especially when the dead bodies of his previous clients begin to pile up, with Gently himself under suspicion from the literal Detective Inspector Gilks. Might Dirk's own life also be in danger from the real killer? Everyone from his secretary to his cleaner could be a suspect…

While this story once again contains little more interconnectedness than any other ordinary TV murder-mystery, by this point the plotting, direction, editing, acting and music have definitely all come together. The central relationship between the fluttery Gently and his blunt partner/assistant MacDuff is now being realised with both subtle realism and spot-on comic timing. When MacDuff quits and Gently admits that he needs his friend's directness to temper his wild imagination, the way the two complement each other comes through loud and clear.

(slowcoach Gilks, meanwhile, is still just not the worthy adversary he was in the books)

Despite the series having found its feet, I still maintain what I said a year ago after the pilot - that Dirk Gently is ill-suited to the typical ITV murder-mystery-of-the-week format. The level of detail in this guy's world of supposed coincidences and longshots requires a longer ongoing serial for chance to sprawl over time. True, the one hour format has certainly given the individual cases more room to be explored than 40 minutes would have, but the fact of their neat beginnings and endings flatly disagrees with such dependence upon random occurrences. There should be a lot of overlap here. This very episode revolves around Dirk's previous clients getting killed, yet with no mention of those from earlier episodes who we know of.

This mismatched format also appears to have secured the show's failure. Oh it may well have been cancelled due to a lack of budget, but a stronger following might still have proved more persuasive to funders. As it is, with only one pilot and THREE WHOLE EPISODES, of course it hasn't had time to catch on.

In short, a fun, but ordinary, detective series. And only just a series.

Definitely not what made the books so different. Apart from that bit about it only just being a series.

(available here)
Review of episode one here.
Review of episode two here.
Review of episode three here.

Merry Madagascar

"Well, looks like our coffee break."

Once again I find myself admiring Dreamworks Animation's sheer productivity.

I mean, in terms of quality, Pixar consistently betters them, but these twenty-minute straight-to-DVD holiday specials (Shrek The Halls is another) look so effortless, and in such a great way.

Merry Madagascar is a 21-minute (+ six more for the closing credits) TV-length episode into the series, featuring Alex, Gloria, Marty and Melman's attempts to deliver an amnesiac Santa's gifts to the world on 24th Julieanuary. (local calendar) In fact, at the outset the timeframe looks a little mixed-up, as it begins with our heroes taking off from Madagascar in a hot-air balloon, and hoping to make it back to their NY zoo for Christmas, but no matter.

The penguins are here too, in part facing-off against their opposite-pole nemesises the reindeer, so for me this brief escapade satisfactorily checked all the boxes.

The plot packs a lot in, although I did feel that the brief duration didn't really allow for so many jokes this time, but that's okay.

Elsewhere on this UK disc are a few music clips from other Dreamworks outings, by way of advertising, and a 'Don't Peek!' section offering, fairly, more of the same:

"It's the wildest cart action ever to hit your favourite zoo animals!"

And these creatures see alot of cart action, judging by this cover.

Santa Claus has left Madagascar.

Really, I got this for Christmas.

(available here)
Related posts:

Madagascar
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Dirk Gently (TV) episode #3 of 4, AKA "Episode 2"

MacDuff: "Suspicious? You don't think he had anything to do with it do you?"
Gently: "People who are guilty of murder tend to be better at hiding their guilt."
MacDuff: "Well he did something."
Gently: "The question is not so much what he did, but how it relates to everything else."

Now THIS is more what I'm up for!

Right from the opening scene this is scripted well, snappily written, and full of imagination.

Back at their old college of St Cedd's, Dirk and Richard become embroiled in artifical intelligence, mind-reading, and an eerie life-size robot of a human being. Despite the series' surprising early abandonment of its interconnectednessisms, this one at least firmly embraces its Doctor Who roots, right down to our heroes' early implication in a murder. (these are being made by ITV Studios remember - a murder is not optional)

The mystery's solution is obvious enough that even I could see it coming earlier than I should have, but the pay-off was an hour that belonged in a much longer-running series.

Unfortunately there's only one episode left. Well, maybe that one will prove the BBC right.

(available here)

Review of episode one here.
Review of episode two here.
Review of episode four here.

Dirk Gently (TV) episode #2 of 4, AKA "Episode 1"

The second episode of the BBC and ITV's joint attempt to make a TV series based on the Dirk Gently books without basing it on the Dirk Gently books is better than the first.

In fact for me its biggest problem was still that preceding pilot show. When I watched that a year ago, it held together so badly that this morning I found myself reluctant to believe in any scene in this one, in case it similarly turned out to not logically follow through afterwards. How's that for interconnectedness?

Not that there seemed to me to be that much interconnectedness on display here. Maybe I failed to pick up on some of the story's subtleties, but as I understand it, in this episode Dirk deals with three separate storylines, which remain separate right to the end. Neither his psychopathic secretary, nor the couple whose marriage is breaking down, turn out to have any connection to the murdered software writer. (that I picked up on)

Although I must agree with Dirk, that software itself does turn out to be a work of genius.

Gently: "Most computer programs help you arrive at decisions by ordering and analysing all the relevant facts so that they then point naturally towards the right decision. But! What if the decision, which all the relevant properly organised and analysed facts point to, is not necessarily the one you want?"

MacDuff: "Then the one you want's probably wrong."

Gently: "Since when did anyone care whether a decision was right or wrong? Mr Edwards knew that. So he developed a piece of software that allowed you to specify in advance the decision you wish to reach! The program's task was then to construct an irrefutable set of logical-sounding steps to link the premise with the conclusion! It justifies the unjustifiable! Don't you see MacDuff? If this software were to fall into the wrong hands, then no people or nation would be safe from tyranny. Not even the Swiss. [whispers] The very existence of the free world is at stake."

Alas, the script itself has a few moments that my poor brain likewise requires some justification for, including:

- why, at the start, Dirk believes his package to be a bomb,
- why Dirk speaks with such loud derision about his client in their own home, surely knowing he is likely to be overheard,
- how Dirk - believing all things to be interconnected - can also believe that he will not be able to solve any case from inside a cell,


- some acknowledgement of the deceased's use of a huge whiteboard mindmap just like Dirk's,
- the police's failure to follow their own basic non-holistic practices, eg. fingerprints, footprints etc., and
- why the British MacDuff at one point refers to Dirk's trousers as his "pants".

But I have to concede that these nitpicks are relatively minor. On the whole I followed this, was drawn in by it, and genuinely enjoyed it. Even the music was low and unobtrusive, despite the actors being quite quiet.

For me its one big fail was the writer's attempt to rationalise horoscopes. Dirk sends one of his clients a fake horoscope outrageously suggesting that he will have an encounter with a rhino today. Within hours, a woman randomly throws a toy rhino past him into a skip. Dirk seems to think that this proves him right, and goes onto explain how the guy is merely twisting his own perception of ordinary life to fit his horoscope.

Sorry Mr Author, but that flying toy rhino actually is too unlikely be our believer distilling order out of chaos. Dirk's argument requires an ordinary event, not an unlikely one. What happened there was foreseen, and indeed predetermined, by YOU. :)

I thought a better solution here would have been to adapt that whole probability of a street light blowing as you walk underneath it piece from The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul. This episode had already established that two million personalised horoscopes were being sent out by the computer each day, so statistically our man could just be the one individual for whom they are all, by chance, correct this week. Probability already foresees this.

All this and lead actor Stephen Mangan has to swerve to avoid walking into the camera at 34:41.


Just as well, such a collision might have proved a bit too much interconnectedness…

(available here)

Review of episode one here.
Review of episode three here.
Review of episode four here.

Trainspotting (film)

I nearly didn't watch this film. In fact, I nearly didn't watch it twice.

A few months ago I videoed it and the audio didn't come out. No idea why, something to do with the digital switchover making everything somehow better.

Tonight I turned on to try to watch it live on Film4, and suddenly found myself turning off again just as it was due to start. Why you ask? Before said channel had decided to preface it with someone (the director?) presenting clips of it! I ask you, I was only trying to watch his film in the way I thought he had intended. (albeit on TV)

Then of course I realised that I was now about to miss a film that I wanted to see, so it became a case of deliberately turning the sound off (HEAVY IRONY) and trying not to look at the screen, while at the same time trying to look at it a bit to guage when the film was starting. How long was this going to go on for? A minute? Twenty minutes? Please Film4. Just. Show. The. Movie. It's really easy. Please.

(Hey, maybe he was talking about a completely different movie, how would I know?)

One of my favourite lines in the Bible is Deuteronomy 30:19b (Good News Version):

"Choose life."

Trainspotting is about a group of people who choose the polar opposite.

"We would've injected vitamin C if only they had made it illegal."

Narrator Renton believes that the only two options in life are conformity, or drugs. Well, he hasn't got out of Scotland much.

In fact, even despite managing to kick his habit and begin a successful new life in London, by the end of the film he still hasn't worked out that other lives are available. (as many as the planet's population) His narration lists a bunch of choices, but he's putting them all in the one box.

It all makes for a movie which I found difficult to come to with much of an angle. I couldn't root for a bunch of crooks, other than for their restoration obviously, which they mostly weren't aiming for. Neither could I root for main character Renton to make a clean break, because he was narrating the whole tale in retrospect with such scorn for those outside of the drug scene, that I had to expect such hopes to come to nought.

Even the movie's tone - placing such stereotyped characters in stylized comic situations - was never going to offer enough realism for drama, and yet this film didn't seem to think that it was exactly a comedy either.

And yet the short sketches that pack out this movie do tell a bigger story quite clearly, most of the time. I couldn't figure out how Tommy had got the others all the way out into the country without telling them they were going hiking - what on Earth other reason is he supposed to have given them?

The sparing trip sequences are done well too, and I would much rather have watched an entire film in this hallucinogenic style, than to keep cutting back to long spells of bleak old real life again. The characters seem to have felt the same way. Maybe that was the point.

Ultimately Trainspotting seems to come down squarely against both of Renton's life alternatives. If it does have a message (and there's no reason why it has to), then I'm afraid I missed that stop.

Perhaps I should have listened to the guy explaining it at the start.

(available, legally I trust, here)

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial

***** Contains spoilers *****

"Tell me when it's over!"

Although I saw its rip-off Mac and Me for free at the cinema in 1989 (unless you count the cola I bought to drink for the full viewing experience), until today I had never watched E.T.

In fact, after spotting space's most famous extra-terrestrials making a cameo appearance in The Phantom Menace last April, I had half a mind to delay watching this entry into the Star Wars universe until when it chronologically comes - at the end, concurrent with Airplane II. (Star Wars has always been set "A long time ago")

While such tenuous links are among the things that I look for in SF to enjoy, in this case I'm glad I didn't. For Star Wars is explicitly and repeatedly stated to be a work of fiction within ET's universe.


I mean the only way that I can think of to reconcile those two opposing tensions would be to also wedge Paul in there too, and argue for his selling the true story of Star Wars to George Lucas as fiction in the 1970s. Yes, it's a good thing that I'm not that sort of reviewer. Which, as already stated, I've spent the past 32 years not being.

Greg: "Well, can't he just beam up?"
Elliot: "This is reality Greg."

In fact, even after my long-play VHS of ITV1 this evening had warmed up and started projecting, for a while there I felt as though I were still not quite watching this film. For the first nine minutes it's hard to clearly make out ANYONE, as both the aliens themselves are hidden from our view, and so are all the humans. There are some trees, and silhouettes, and mist, but even these are vague. And no, I don't think using short-play would have helped, nor even 35mm.

The plot, as you may know, involves the 'titular' 'E.T.' (we never learn his real name, or even if his race have them) getting left behind on Earth and falling in with a crowd of kids. Those darned shadowy authorities aren't far behind though (we see them from behind a lot), and it isn't that long before they're advancing upon the children's home and proving by their actions that they never got that science lesson at school about chloroform.

In a scene that is played brilliantly for all it's worth, E.T. dies. I mean yes, he does come back to life for no explained reason afterwards, of course he does, it's a movie, but in 1982 this was before that had become such a staple of the formula.

E.T. also reveals that he can fly. Well, he really should have remembered this ability in scene one when he had to rush back to his spaceship - it would have saved everyone so much angst.

Overall, although I don't dispute E.T.'s standing as a classic, I'm afraid I never really engaged with it. He is brilliantly realised, and yes I did start to feel sorry for him right from that opening, but I'm ashamed to admit that I just didn't care much for the kids, or their mom. I'm also glad that they kept his speech to such a minimum, endowing him with clumsy Mr Bean-like qualities to make us like him.

I remember getting some 3D E.T. tie-in marketing as a kid, which at the time I perceived as connected to the planned sequel, but in the end such a follow-up never landed.

How ironic that, in real life, E.T. actually did get left alone.

(available here)

Shrek Forever After

Poor old Shrek.

In his first movie he got married to a woman who he'd only just met. In the second this went really badly. In the third, he had kids which he obviously didn't relish either. Now in this fourth one it's really no wonder that he's losing his cool big time.

The reason why it's no wonder is because this is what every Shrek movie revolves around.

Still, you have to admire how Shrek Forever After deals with these snowballing sequel deadweights - it has Rumplestiltskin change history so that Shrek can get back to his good ol' movie one self again! As a result this film is much more in line with what the original outing promised us of him. Even Fiona gets to be a fighter again!

And the gags? Well I always find myself quoting them in these things…

Puss: "We must do something before they fandango themselves into oblivion!"

Donkey: "How do you know my name anyway?"

Oh. Just the two great quotes this time then. Well, that's good too.


This is the bit where I log that I was watching the BBC1 premiere of this movie on Christmas Day, which featured the above ident beforehand, followed by, heh-heh, the US print containing Larry King as Doris instead of Jonathan Ross! *sigh* The BBC…

Really good for a third sequel. Shame the whole series didn't take place in this altered timeline.

And with that, it's ogre.

Nah, he'll be back.

(available here)
Related reviews:

Shrek
Shrek 2
Shrek The Third
Shrek The Halls

The Whitcoulls Santa Takes A Holiday

So it turns out that New Zealand's Whitcoulls Santa, after enduring years of belittlement, is actually the REAL Santa. How else can you explain his making it round to the opposite side of the globe so quickly on Christmas Eve?

Red Dwarf X

So. You're back. Again. Yes, yet again.

Hooray!

I mean Red Dwarf may only have managed ten seasons in 24 years, but is there any other show, in any genre, that has returned from oblivion so many times over such a long stretch? And with pretty much the same core cast throughout?

Because these days the series' survival is what keeps it being such a joy. In the old days I loved Red Dwarf because it was so well thought through and cryingly funny, but ever since season seven, for me, it's been a case of forgiving its faults and loving it unconditionally. Did I say "for me"? Well, no, I think most of us started feeling this way about it at some point…

This latest six-part run has been the cheapest-looking of the lot - even more so than season one - but the scripts have made a marked improvement since the awkwardness of Back To Earth. It's all a bit formulaic now, more character-orientated, and less about fun science-fiction ideas, but still certainly worth watching.

1. Trojan

Trojan firmly starts the series on the right foot. We're back to the cheapy studio-audience sitcom style of season one again, albeit with lacklustre picture-quality and remote direction, but the script and performances effortlessly overcome this. There's no sense at all of this new series being a revival - it's just the next one. Awesome.

2. Fathers And Suns

A drunk Lister attempts to anticipate his sober choices the following day. Meanwhile the ship's new computer system anticipates everyone's choices forever. Meanwhile everyone tries to work out whether Siamese sisters are waistless.

3. Lemons

An accident with a Swedish flat-packed gene-rewriting device sends our heroes back in time to Jesus' day. Here they blunder into the man himself, where the resultant foreknowledge convinces him to prevent Christianity before it becomes so evil. Yes, what starts out as Red Dwarf at its most fearless gradually loses ground as the author starts getting his characters onto a soapbox. Jesus' running from his death might have made more sense, but I guess this pre-Christian world didn't have nasty things like crucifixion. Ultimately Lister does briefly concede that Christianity is not the bad thing after all, but rather the people who abuse it. Glad he caught up. Fun episode otherwise.

4. Entangled

Oh no, it's episode four, which is the one when author Doug Naylor tends to run short of inspiration and start flagging. This is good fun all the way through again, but the episode doesn't seem sure what it's about. You could do a whole episode on quantum entanglement, or being perpetually wrong, but here the two great ideas cramp each other, resulting in little realised potential for either. Still worth watching, doesn't bode well for five and six though.

5. Dear Dave

With a title that might work better on episode two, this is this season's really slow episode. Lister and Kryten appear to have forgotten the many other humans who now share space with them (eg. The rest of the crew presumably), but that's par for the course in this carefree series. For example, the Rimmer-seeing-Lister-bonking-Kryten joke from Polymorph also gets revisited without any of the characters remembering it. The high point in this one has to be the highly contrived game of charades, which absolutely sizzles with life. Chris Barrie keeps fighting to keep a straight face again! This is most definitely a good sign.

6. The Beginning

Now this is what I mean by the series still missing a co-writer's input. Here we have a valid story with a great in-genre solution, running jokes, and a character's personal journey to underpin it all. And yet, there is just no mistaking the lack of gags available to fill-out the episode's running-time. There's a significant splurge in the budget this week, with a good dozen extra performers, most of them even speaking, yet almost everything the simulants have to say is laboured. The joke about not mentioning the resolution to season eight's cliffhanger falls flat on me too. As I said at the top, I got into Red Dwarf partly because, in the early days, it used to be so well thought through…

I really hope there's more Red Dwarf on the cards. These guys still have the rest of their lives ahead of them!

(ῧ)

(available, for a reasonable few dollarpounds, here)

Isaiah 9:2-3 & 6-7

And today's celebrity Bible-reader is... my mum! :)

Doctor Who: Shadows Of The Vashta Nerada

It is the 23rd century. The Earth is pretty well covered with water. After K9 it all looks like the great cataclysm, but there's a history fact in here attributing it to global warming. Might that be the same thing? As things stand here at the end of 2012, we may never know…

Mankind now lives in giant sprawling complexes under the sea, relying upon artificial intelligence to run its systems. (always a smart move) It's all going reasonably well, until a bright flash deposits outside a giant hungry shark. Oh, and the Vashta Nerada. Don'tcha just hate it when that happens?

Now, I know, the Vashta Nerada ought to just eat the shark, but in computer games it's never as simple as that. Nothing is. Even something as straightforward as running down a corridor becomes a case of rewiring circuits, ducking out of sight from zombies, and waiting for lights to come on in sequence. (Vashta Nerada remember)

Squeezing every possible strategy out of the gameplay, at one point you have to guide Amy past several obstacles and up multiple flights of steps, after which you then go on to… guide the Doctor through exactly the same.

I have to admit, this being episode four of the Doctor Who Adventure Game series, similarities with episodes one and two (author Phil Ford's other two full stories in this range) are beginning to emerge. The wires game, the timed obstacles, the illness, the base under siege from monsters with a sweeping green line-of-vision, not to mention all those looong corridors, ramps, staircases and control panels…

I can't really criticise any of that though. These games are FREE, and as such of course we look beyond the clumsy graphics, and applaud the imaginative way in which elements are recycled to give us another fresh instalment of Doctor Who, albeit in a different medium.

The highlight here for me therefore really has to be the cut scenes. Despite skipping some travelling from A to B, some of these go on for quite a while, making it feel more like watching an episode. When the Doctor and Amy, knowing that they are up against creatures that can only harm them in the shadows, return to the TARDIS to later emerge without having thought to get a torch, well, then you know you're in the same dizzy mindset as the TV show these days. Even the climactic final sequence involves the Doctor as usual just pressing a button to magically undo for him everything that's happened so far. (again like so many stories since the show's revival) What an enormous shame though, that said cut scenes didn't extend to actually showing us this most vital sequence from the story.

In fact, after the surprising minimalism and co-authorship of the preceding third instalment, in retrospect, the jumps in narrative here suggest a production finished in something of a rush.

What's that? Series two of Doctor Who: The Adventure Games only ran for one episode?

Well, that's a bit of a shame. I think.

Doctor: "Hmm. Generator's still not working properly. Must be something blocking the vents. I'll keep working on it here, you head up the corridor and…"

Amy: "I know, I know, bravely face the darkness and monsters and save the day again."

Doctor: "Well, it's probably just a matter of flicking a switch actually, but yes. Good luck with… err… flicking that switch."

[AMY PROCEEDS TO RUN UP THE LONG RAMPED CORRIDOR, WHILE BEHIND HER THE DOCTOR JUST STANDS THERE LIKE KAMELION AND DOES NOTHING]

About an Archive - The East Anglian Film Archive 2011

It's not often that an online movie hooks me in for more than three minutes, but if I'm honest, it has happened when it's been shot on 8mm film.

So looking online for info about film preservation today, I was quickly sucked in by the East Anglican Film Archive's own 22-minute doco about itself. There are shots aplenty sourced from probably most film gauges that I can name, and all to publicise how they have about another 100 hours waiting to be discovered elsewhere on the same site.

Looking through this montage of English farmers, dancers and gatherings of people in gasmasks, the claim made by Roger Lloyd Pack's opening narration that it describes "like no other medium the minute detail of everyday life through the decades" was clearly borne out.

Even Bernard Cribbins shows up at one point with a role of ciné film that he shot while making a much bigger movie back in the day.

All this and a rare real life glimpse of Vision On's the Prof David Cleveland, or was it his nemesis? Either way, it made a change to see him using a machine that wasn't trying to chase him off into the sunset.

Afterwards I felt suitably inspired, so I at last got onto ripping some of my audio cassettes to aiff/wav files, key sections of which were recorded to synchronise with my own yesteryear filming on Super 8.

After all, like so much preserved by the EAFA, it only happened the once.

Available, with hundreds of extras, for free, here.

Doctor Who: TARDIS

Now this game I enjoyed!

Like some of my favourite Doctor Who stories, this one has a tiny cast, and is set almost entirely inside the TARDIS. I could detail the plot further, but really what's the point? You already know that it's probably going to involve some disaster in-flight, having to operate the control console, and investigating a bit more of the ship. When the music runs out, we even get to hear the TARDIS sound effects clean, a sense of realism which the TV show just about never achieves these days.

There's also tons of continuity with earlier stories - both from TV and this online series of computer games - and even a multi-choice trivia quiz. That last minigame broke the fourth wall for me though - the Doctor really shouldn't be setting Amy questions about his past, nor using story-titles in them, and she really shouldn't know the answers. Granted, some of the artifacts in the drawing room do offer information windows with the answers, but again, Amy wouldn't see these. Much better here would have been questions purely about Amy's travels with the Doctor.

Not that that's the only instance of the fourth wall getting broken in this one. Once separated, of course the two of them have to start talking out loud to themselves, in the Doctor's case even addressing us directly at one point.


Oh, well, this one does that all the while in spin-offs.

Some of the minigames from earlier instalments are becoming familiar now, but I really have to hand it to the scope of this story's missions:

NEW OBJECTIVE! Build a tachyon feedback loop.
NEW OBJECTIVE! Explore the TARDIS before moving on.
NEW OBJECTIVE! Find out what is happening.

James Moran delivers a good witty script this time, one which had me laughing out loud in places, and making my time on this worth investing. The Doctor appears to skid through the doors of the drawing room in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of Kramer.

And speaking of said room, just who is that woman he prominently displays a portrait of in there?


All this and a cliffhanger into the next one.

Now I feel like I'm watching the TV show! :)

The Muppet Christmas Carol*

For a movie with the word 'Christmas' in its title, this film sure does a nice line in Eastery resurrection.

For in 1992 this was the first muppet movie to be made after the sad, sudden and downright early death (53) of their main creator Jim Henson.

Would the rest of his team be able to pull it off and keep the muppets alive without his voices, puppeteering and inspired leadership, or was this going to be derivative proof that the muppet magic had died with him?

Thank God it was the former!

I still remember the thrill that I got in the cinema in 1992 as the opening titles rolled, promising that after a few years of silence, the muppets were about to live again. There's an animated caricature of Kermit that fills the screen. Then the credits begin rolling, slowly listing each of the main muppets by their character name. "Starring Kermit the Frog…" This was just the reassurance that I wanted, that the muppets were real living entities. I remember smiling that Gonzo was still getting billed under his stage name of "The Great Gonzo". It's a shame that more recent productions have dropped this running gag.

It's strange, but when I first saw this at the cinema I also felt that there were elements lacking. I thought that Kermit's voice wasn't quite right yet, but that didn't matter because he was still authentically Kermit. I thought that there were too many humans and not enough muppets as usual, but that didn't matter because it was quite a serious drama in places. I thought that the songs weren't as catchy, but that didn't matter because I would overheard people at work singing them, years later.

Well, perhaps the real shortcoming was me.

And you know what? Over the years The Muppet Christmas Carol has grown on me with repeated viewings, and apparently I'm not alone. I have no figures to back this up, but the way that I hear people talk about it, today I'd estimate that it has become the best-loved of all the muppet movies. Even just a month ago I found myself listening to Rob enthusing on about it. Not bad for a make-or-break new beginning. Actually, a triumph.

Despite how I have long since come to love the film myself, I still find its popularity a surprise. I haven't seen all the other muppet flicks, but I suspect that this is the only one that looks quite so cold and depressing throughout. There are few bright colours in Ebeneezer Scrooge's miserable corner of London, and the whole thing is shot to look like exactly the genre that it's going for - a ghost story. The spirits of Christmas past and future look nothing like muppets, and particularly in the latter's case, are genuinely chilling.

That said, this film is, bravely, much bigger on muppet warmth than muppet jokes. I guess that's how it overcomes all the cold snow and loneliness.

And those songs? Wow. Having just watched the film again tonight, I don't think the muppets have ever had a finer collection. Those lyrics are much deeper than I'm used to. And I've heard many of them enough times now for them to have become familiar - another luxury that I didn't have on that first viewing at the cinema 20 years ago.

Scrooge himself remains a weak and easily defeated villain - he cracks so quickly - however given how this weakness has been present in every version of this story that I've ever seen, I suspect that's simply a shortcoming of the original book, which I've never read.

Humbug? Unemployed? Sour? Nah.

Even the vegetables love this movie.

10/10.

(available here)