Around the approximate age of 35 years old, people like me had an enduring experience that is Jim Henson’s contributed a lot to rearing a child. I loved how absurd The Muppet Show was ridiculous compared to all the other crappy cartoons aimed at children during the time. And some of the characters were easy to identify with. Thank you, Statler, Waldorf, and Fozzie Bear, who had so many awful puns and wanted nothing more than to be loved. I think the first time I felt a little twinge of celebrity infatuation (the Archies’ Veronica is a fantasy that is not on the list) was in the episode of The Muppet Show when Kermit the Frog and Linda Ronstadt were flirty while Miss Piggy had a huge problem with it.
My parents took me with a few of my friends to see the movie when it finally came out in the summer of 1979 and my friends all did the same thing. We went all the way to the front row because I had heard that there was a scene when Kermit rode a bike.
As someone from my generation, I find it hard to believe that there exists a person who can watch a film about the life and works of Henson in an objective way. Take Ron Howard’s Jim Henson: Idea Man, for instance. It is in many respects a disheartening movie: very formulaic in style, it provides nothing new about Henson and the entire ethos surrounding him and his work, and it omits a great deal of information which would only disturb the happy story. And yet, to watch a large part of the film which is composed of such a wide range of archival footage certainly an abundance of location and action footage, as well as various behind-the-scenes perspectives on how the results were achieved is comparable to the introduction of Proust’s madeleine cakes to find out how it feels like to experience Henson’s art for the first time.
If, on the other hand, you are a Henson admirer and appreciate his legacy, how the story goes may already be known to you. Gradually, he rose through the ranks to become one of the main producers of the globally popular children’s program Sesame Street. Years later, he expanded his artistry and repurposed the show into a new format complete with a host of new characters, including Miss Piggy, a future legend, and Kermit the Frog, a brand of Muppet characters that kids loved.
In this regard, he did see the hope of producing it in London where even though Henson rejected endless network solicitations, it subsequently became one of the more popular shows in the world before being canceled in 1981. Afterward, his attention also shifted to motion pictures, not only to the movies with muppets characters (The Muppet movie from 1979, The Great Muppet Caper from 1981, The Muppets Take Manhattan from 1984) but also immediately to the new projects of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986) that were then quite incomprehensible but eventually managed to reach the status of cult films.
Reviewing different videos or memories of other people like fellow Muppeteer and director Frank Oz or teenager Jennifer Connelly who played a role in ‘Labyrinth’, is certainly exciting, however, as it happens with several documentaries, Jim Henson: Idea Man turns way too close to hagiography as well, in the course of it. Recently, Howard has started another career as a documentary filmmaker, he has filmed the likes of Jay-Z, The Beatles, Luciano Pavarotti, or a small community aiming to reconstruct itself after a large fire (‘Rebuilding Paradise’). In this case, however, it feels as if he uninterestingly connects with the topic. Consequently, everything he excludes exceeds the expectations and does not correspond to the goals of the film which is primarily of deeper subtitle a tribute.
On the other hand, though Howard looks at The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth, he somehow forgets about The Great Muppet Caper (most peculiar since it was Henson’s first official direction) and The Muppets Take Manhattan completely.
Lastly, Howard demonstrates how Hawt Disney Studios had intended to take Henson’s business right after his death. Again, he fails to say about the legal scuffle between the two when the deal did not go through and the Disney maintained that they have the rights.
In this day and age, wholly extraordinary pop culture icons are given multi-part documentaries that would very well seem to be on Trump’s ridiculous levels. Trying to squash the life of Jim Henson, the all-time favorite pop culture figure and puppeteer, into fifty six minutes without getting into the nitty-gritty and omitting details will definitely be disappointing for the fans looking for new information on Mr. Henson and everything that he has stood for.
Although Jim Henson: Idea Man adds new nuts and bolts to the available literature on Henson, his work, and the documentary making, I will not be entirely over-excited to add it to my collection. It ought to be of interest to the children who wish to know more about the man behind their childhood memories. The movie will surely evoke a wave of emotions among parents, some of who might cry during the opening of the film depicting his memorial service. But then again, this is the story of Jim Henson’s story in its entirety. He certainly has a vision and an endless amount of way too interesting content to work with. Repeatedly, I can see how one might think that there isn’t enough in the tape, but I can almost guarantee a second film.
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