The Muppet Christmas Carol

As Scrooge, Michael Caine rises to the challenge and helps find the pathos beneath the puppetry. Read full review

The Muppet Christmas Carol's warmth, wit and obvious affection for Dickens make it one of the greatest Christmas films – and literary adaptations – of all time. Read full review

The Muppet Christmas Carol may be the most important Dickens adaptation of our time. Read full review

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are joined by Caine as a hilarious Scrooge in this irresistibly sweet musical adaptation of Dickens’ festive tale. Read full review

I thought that The Muppet Christmas Carol was a wonderful movie. The Muppets' re-enactment of the story was funny and touching and full of Christmas spirit. Michael Caine was a perfect Scrooge, in looks, manner and expression. [9 Sept 1992]

If you love Christmas movies, and especially if you have some young family members you wish to share your holiday with, you can't go wrong with The Muppet Christmas Carol. Read full review

Vastly enjoyable despite the syrupy, soppy song bit in the middle (go make a glass of mulled wine during it). Michael Caine is perfect in the role and there are many genuine belly laughs. Read full review

The three ghosts of Christmas are wonderful. Elsewhere, Fozzie Bear bears a resemblance to Francis L Sullivan in the David Lean Dickens adaptations, and there's a shop called Micklewhite. As an actor, Kermit can corrugate his forehead vertically. Good fun. Read full review

This magical piece of family-friendly escapism could well be the perfect antidote to the influx of big budget commercialism which will inevitably saturate the local multiplexes during the festive season. Read full review

No one can know what Jim Henson would have thought of The Muppet Christmas Carol, but I suspect he would have admired the way it fuses Dickens' spirit with his and usually comes up with something fresh and subtly different from either. Taking Scrooge's advice, Brian Henson and his crew keep Christmas in their own way - which, I suppose, is the only way to keep it. [11 Dec 1992, p.C-19]

Will kids like the movie? The kids around me in the theater seemed to, although more for the Muppets than for the cautionary tale of Scrooge. Read full review

Little ones may squirm during the more literary parts, but the sappy tunes by Paul Williams make fine potty breaks. Adults will enjoy the gently mocking tone - Rizzo asks whether the ghostly goings-on will scare kids. ''Nah,'' replies Gonzo. ''This is culture.'' As for the Muppets, it's great to see them together again on the big screen. God bless them, every one. [11 Dec 1992, p.4D]

YOU'VE gotta love the casting. Defying the skeptics, The Great Gonzo keeps his furious urges in check and transforms himself into none other than the prolific Charles Dickens, popping up on camera to act as our narrative guide through his Christmas Carol classic. For the feisty one, it's a remarkable stretch. [15 Dec 1992]

There's no great show of wit or tunefulness here, and the ingenious cross-generational touches are fairly rare. But there is a lively kiddie version of the Dickens tale, one that very young viewers ought to understand. Read full review

This adaptation of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic is not as enchanting or amusing as the previous entries in the Muppet series. But nothing can really diminish the late Jim Henson's irresistibly appealing characters. Read full review

Although there are enough zany antics and puppet slapstick to keep the younger kids amused, there is little of the charm and intelligent humor that made both grown-ups and children love Muppets in the first place. [11 Dec 1992, p.8]

Although The Muppet Christmas Carol doesn’t really work as an adaptation of the beloved Dickens novel or as a Muppet movie, it nevertheless works on its own terms for a niche audience. It’s the kind of high concept family film that can be carted out every Christmas season and enjoyed in the same way as “Frosty the Snowman”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, or “The Year without a Santa Claus.” Read full review

The Muppet Christmas Carol is cute rather than touching. It could have been both. [11 Dec 1992, p.24]

A mixed bag of mixed moods. The somberness of Dickens's oft-filmed seasonal cautionary fable works at cross purposes with the Muppets, keeping their usual gentle anarchy at bay. Read full review

The Muppet Christmas Carol" isn't terrible, by any means. But it's resoundingly moderate, with merely passable songs by Paul Williams, and only occasional real laughter. Read full review

The Muppet Christmas Carol plays like an overextended rerun of a not-quite top-drawer Muppet show. [11 Dec 1992, p.53]

Somewhere along the way -- 'round about the Ghost of Christmas Past stuff -- the magic has fallen out of the story. The treacly score by Miles Goodman, with songs by Paul Williams, doesn't help. The Muppets are at their best when they're anarchic, without all this soggy whimsy. [11 Dec 1992, p.F12]

A wish that there were more Michael Caines and fewer Muppets kept cropping up during The Muppet Christmas Carol, a movie whose mechanical cuteness becomes a too-complicated veil -- and a smothering one -- for the classic Charles Dickens story. [11 Dec 1992, p.C1]

The Muppet Christmas Carol never approaches the freewheeling atmosphere of earlier Muppet movies. While all the familiar Muppet characters appear, they often seem stilted; watching Kermit and Miss Piggy acting as Bob and Emily Cratchit is nowhere near as much fun as watching them play themselves. With too few exceptions, the movie doesn't allow the Muppets to inject their own personalities into their characters. [14 Dec 1992, p.C6]

A sadly dull and unimaginative outing. Read full review

This is the dullest and least successful adaptation of the Christmas chestnut I've ever seen, possibly because the mixture of Muppets and humans creates anomalies of scale and degrees of stylized behavior that the film tries to ignore rather than work with. Read full review

A talky, plodding film that seems likely to bore children and adults in equal measure. [11 Dec 1992, p.B2]