This week for the ‘Tis The Season Cinema Erin and I watched The Muppets Christmas Carol. I watched it with my kids.

I thought I’d give you a blow-by-blow of our watching experience for something different this week.

After we open with the film being dedicated to Muppets creator Jim Henson, who had died in 1990, two years before the movie was made, we move forward into the movie.

We open up with Gonzo telling us he’s going to tell us the story because he knows it “like the back of his hand.” He also says his name is Charles Dickens.

He gets the story a little bit messed up as he starts out by saying the Marleys are dead.

(illustration by Brianna Ashby)

And then he introduces Scrooge.

Oh, a song. I forgot this was a musical. Okay. I’m ready for that.

This starts a debate between The Boy and I about how many of these A Christmas Carol renditions are musicals featuring songs about how mean and miserly Scrooge is. I said there aren’t many and he says there are a ton, like every remake that has been released lately. I still disagree.

Seeing Michael Cain  as Scrooge makes me think of this hilarious story he told on The Graham Norton Show one time about how he was at a Hollywood party and Katherine Hepburn asked him why everyone kept calling him “my cocaine.”

The Boy must have thought of it too because we call out “My Cocaine!” at the same time when we see him.

Wow, he was young in this movie. Well, he would be since it was made in 1992.

That poor little rat was just used to clean a window.

Oh Kermit. There he is. Sigh. I love Kermit.

Dude. Michael Cain is bald in this movie. Is that a hair piece? Or is it a hair piece when he wears in other movies?

Kermit is so cute in his little suit.

The Boy and I read A Christmas Carol two years ago and actually enjoyed it.

Who is playing the nephew? Hmmm…some British actor I’ve never heard of – Steven McIntosh. I’m not going to look up what he’s been in before. I’m not going to do it. Not this time. No.

Okay. According to Wikipedia:  “He is perhaps best known for his role as Andreas Tanis in the action horror films Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.” Never heard of it. That was a waste of a search.

Beeker!!

More singing. Now it is Kermit’s turn. Also, those rats are really clean for … well, rats.

I always think it is interesting they mix humans in with animals. I don’t know why I find that interesting. My life is just a little sad, I guess.

This movie must have cost quite a bit to make.

Google says $12 million and that it made 27.2 million. Now you know.

Ha. Jacob Marley is one of the old men that usually complain during the show.

In case you were curious, this is what Michael Caine told GQ Magazine about being in the movie: “To start, my daughter, who is the mother of my grandchildren, was then seven, and she had never seen me in a movie. I had never made a movie that a 7-year-old can see. And so a man mentioned the Muppets and I said, “That’s it! I’ll do that!” And it’s A Christmas Carol, it’s a fabulous tale! You’ll be old Scrooge, it’ll be marvelous! And it was absolutely perfect at that time for what I wanted. I could make it, and my daughter could see it. That’s why I did it. And it was lovely.”

Scrooge just beat his dressing gown. That dude is a bit on edge, I’d say.

I have to be honest, I haven’t seen this one in years and forgot it was a little darker than other Muppets movies. I was hoping for a little more goofiness in it, but yet it’s so well done I can’t help liking it.

The angles of the camera are very nice indeed. Scrooge should be eating more than bread, though. He’s an old man and needs more nutrients in his diet.

Oh good. The old guys. A bit more silliness now and now I know why Gonzo said the Marleys were dead. Because there were two.

This first ghost? Yikes.

Imma gonna have nightmares tonight.

Seriously. What is that? It is bad 90s special effects is what it is. She’s sort of like a digital cabbage patch doll. Shudder.

Ah. Now we are getting to the Muppet goodness. We are singing and dancing and just being downright silly at the dance where Scrooge meets Belle.

 “Oh please, do not show me that Christmas,” Scrooge says.

Yes, because you were a JERK during that Christmas, Scrooge! It’s why you are totally alone now.

We’ve gone through a couple more songs and another ghost and now here is Miss Piggy.

Aw and Kermit and his nephew playing Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

The Husband walks in and brings up an awkward point: “He’s a frog. She’s a pig. How did they have children?”

We tell him we don’t want to think about it and to go back to working on his stories for the paper and be quiet.

Now the nephew and Kermit are singing a sweet song and I ask The Husband what the nephew’s name is.

“That’s a great question. They introduced him in –”

I tune TV Trivia Man out by Googling and finding out his name is Robin.

Little Miss looks up and sees Miss Piggy and says, “That hair doesn’t work for her.”

Now The Boy and The Husband are arguing about what happens to the ghost of Christmas Present at the end of the night. The Boy says he dies because it is the end of the day and the end of the present. He pointed out that his hair gets grayer each time we see him, which means he dies at the end. He’s a ghost, though, so I don’t think he can die.

The Husband says he lives on because he is in the present and the present is always there.

Who knows. I’ll let them have that debate. I have a movie and blog post to finish.

Oh dear, poor Miss Piggy. She’s crying. Tiny Tim has died.

Now Michael Caine is crying with her. Now I want to cry.

Little Miss is finding the movie a little scary so now she’s watching The Muppets Now show on her phone.

The Spirit of The Future is…um…ominous.

Ah. We’ve reached the scene where Scrooge is joyously celebrating being alive and being able to celebrate Christmas. Now he’s giving money to all the creatures around, ordering a turkey, etc. This is my favorite part.

Now Michael Caine is singing and The Boy says, “Who knew My Cocaine could sing.”

He’s doing a pretty good job. Not really. I’m just trying to be nice.

Singing is not really his thing. He reminds me of Rex Harrison in – well, anything he tries to sing in. He sort of sing-talks, but it works.

This was such a nice cozy movie to watch together and now that our Christmas tree is up it is making Christmas movies even nicer and relaxing to watch together.

Overall we agreed that it was a nice movie.

Except for The Boy who said, “Yeah. It was alright.” But then he added. “I enjoyed that.”

To see what Erin thought of the movie hop on over to her blog and to read Kajta at Breath of Hallelujah click over to her blog. If you joined in with us, leave a link to your blog post in the comments so we can link to yours as well.

Up next in our feature is Holiday Inn. We post our impressions on Thursdays.

After that we are posting our impressions of the following movies:                                                                           

Dec. 15: It’s A Wonderful Life

Dec. 22: Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas

This week for the ‘Tis The Season Cinema Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I watched White Christmas. We pushed off our blog posts for it until today since we were both busy with family events for Thanksgiving, though Erin had a lot more going on than I did.

If this is your first time here, Erin and I have been watching Christmas movies since the beginning of November to get into the holiday spirit.

If you haven’t watched the movie White Christmas here is a little background without giving away the story:

The movie begins in December of 1944, during World War II, with Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby entertaining fellow soldiers at war.

The movie moves forward after that to Kaye and Crosby becoming an entertainment powerhouse duo who tour for years, have a fight, realize they’ve been working too hard and too long, and then later meet a couple of lovely ladies who are also singers/entertainers. To make a long story short, the four of them travel to Vermont to have a white Christmas and while there learn that the owner of the inn they are staying at is their old commander from the war. They then learn that the inn isn’t doing well financially and work to bring the inn back for their commander by holding their show at the inn.

While this movie is a Christmas movie, it isn’t all Christmas all the time and there is an actual plot instead of just one Christmas song to the next.

For those who don’t know, White Christmas was originally written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn (which is on our list to watch in December). Holiday Inn also starred Bing Crosby. The song was first publicly performed by Crosby after the movie and later recorded by him, though he wasn’t that bowled over by the song to begin with (and probably hated it by the end of his life when he had to keep singing it).

(Off the subject a bit but I often get Holiday Inn and White Christmas mixed up in my head since there are two male leads in both movies and Crosby is in both movies.)

Wikipedia writes this about when the song was written: “Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song.  One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing. One day he told his secretary, “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”

I don’t know that I agree the song is the best ever written, but it is one of the most popular Christmas songs ever, and also very sweet.

As for the movie, which was released in 1954 we kick right off with the song about seven minutes into the movie, setting the tone for a sentimental and sweet ride, with a little bitter mixed in as you are forced to think about our soldiers and how they had to fight or be stationed overseas during Christmas and other holidays. As always, the singing of the song, while American soldiers look heartbroken in the audience, made me tear up again this year.

According to that same Wikipedia article (yes, I was lazy and looked things up on Wikipedia which isn’t always the most accurate site), Bing Crosby once told his nephew that the hardest thing he ever did was perform White Christmas in December of 1944 in a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrew Sisters in front of 100,000 GIs without breaking down. Many of those men were killed two days later in the Battle of the Bulge.

There are many happy moments in the movie, though, even if some of the background is a bit tear-inducing. I would definitely call this one a feel-good movie, but not so feel-good there isn’t some depth in it. It’s, of course, a musical with plenty of impromptu songs and dance routines, especially as they rehearse for the big show to be held at the inn.

Kaye and lead actress Vera-Ellen were well-known dancers and actors at the time. They sizzle up the screen with their moves. Vera-Ellen always fascinated me because she looks like a real life Barbie doll. The cynical side of me wonders if she ate properly but I’m guessing her thin stature was from all the dancing.

I read in an article on Good Housekeeping that interestingly, Rosemary Clooney played Vera-Ellen’s older sister, but Vera-Ellen was actually seven years older at the age of 33. Bing played Rosemary’s love interest and was actually 25 years older than her, which is a bit creepy when you think about it. Rosemary did look a lot older than 26, though.

Another piece of trivia from that article was that one of the most famous scenes, when Crosby and Kaye dress up as Rosemary and Vera-Ellen, was actually not in the script. Crosby and Kaye were goofing off and it was written into the script because the director thought it was hilarious. Crosby and Kaye also thought the scene was hilarious because they kept laughing throughout.  

White Christmas is not only sung at the beginning of the movie but also in a large routine at the end, which produced the classic image of the singers in their white suits with the red trim (Santa suits in other words).

I would say this movie is the number one reason that people all over the world think they have to have snow on Christmas. It was hard for me to accept as a kid when we traveled to North Carolina and didn’t end up with snow for Christmas day, except for one year when they had a freak snowstorm.

Luckily, living in the North, we have White Christmases more often than not. Of course, it is nowhere near as romantic as the crooners make it sound when they are singing along about it on the train on their way to Vermont. When we are shoveling out our driveways we don’t sing, “Snow! Snow! Snow!” in perfect harmony. We more often mumble the words and follow them with some other choice words while flinging our shovels back in the garage.

I made a cup of cocoa to sip while I watched the movie, which I watched alone this year since we’ve seen it as a family several times and I was sure the family would want a break from it this year.

I might make my husband suffer through It’s A Wonderful Life again when we watch that one, which is a movie I like, but he doesn’t. Too bad for him. Ha.

To read Erin’s thoughts about the movie, see her post on her blog.

Up next for our ‘Tis The Season Cinema is Muppets Christmas Carol, if you’d like to join and blog with us about it.

The finishing list for the feature is:

Dec. 8: Holiday Inn                                                                           

Dec. 15: It’s A Wonderful Life

Dec. 22: Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas