Review by C.J. Bunce
In the pantheon of genuine, sincere goodness over the past century, the world has been rewarded with several greats that have used their knowledge and creativity to influence young and old alike. For me that includes people like Fred Rogers, Charles Schulz, Jane Goodall, Steve Irwin, Bob Ross, and John Denver. But nobody touched audiences across the world both at home on the television set and in movie theaters like Jim Henson. His life is the subject of a new documentary on Disney+, Jim Henson–Idea Man, from director Ron Howard. Howard uses a wealth of historical archive material and Henson’s own artwork to present a new look at the auteur and inventor of the Muppets, with a heavy lean toward his immense pre-Muppet work in advertising.
Jim Henson–Idea Man is not the teary-eyed look at the beloved creator you’ve seen before. Only older viewers who lived in Washington, DC, and the Northeast have probably ever seen many of the commercials that Henson created with wife Jane in their early days of marionettes and puppets. The extent to which the Henson couple contributed to a wide range of products and later national brands in their commercial work is simply mind-boggling.
Howard shows how all the commercial creativity led to Henson being able to be a Renaissance man of sorts–wanting to be a part of every medium with too many ideas to be able to get involved in everything he wanted to do. Henson died at age 53, and the ticking clock is a symbol Howard smartly uses throughout the documentary.
Muppet creator and Henson collaborator Frank Oz gets the bulk of the interviews to describe and try to define the man, along with new interviews with Henson family members Lisa Henson, Cheryl Henson, Brian Henson, and Heather Henson, and archive interviews from ex-wife Jane Henson. Other Muppet creators fill in the blanks, including Jerry Nelson and Fran Brill.
High points include the development of Kermit the Frog (and his similarity to Henson), along with the creation of Rowlf the dog, Miss Piggy breaking out from the other characters, the discussion over who would play Bert and who would play Ernie, and Henson designing Big Bird. Henson also encountered other famous people in his day, and seeing the shy man encounter so many of them if fascinating, everyone from the Queen of England to Richard Nixon (who gave him his first Emmy) to Orson Welles, who once interviewed him for his own Prime Time show.
Fascinating is Henson’s attempt to make a Muppet TV series, only to get rejected by all the American studios. It took a move to London before The Muppet Show was signed for its first season, enough to lock it in as the most watched television series up to that point. As for coverage of the movie years, Howard provides good footage behind the making of The Muppet Movie, but skips over its sequels, focusing instead on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Frank Oz, the actor and voice of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi, and the creator and actor behind Sesame Street and The Muppet Show’s Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Animal, created a documentary called Muppet Guys Talking a few years ago with five of the original Muppet performers to recount the creation of their timeless fantasy world and work with Henson. It and a spin-off provide a more fun look at Henson if you can find it. Check out my review here.
To the extent watching a cake being made isn’t your thing, you might skip this one, and kids will want to skip seeing the Muppets worked by humans, which takes the magic away. The show also includes segments of Henson’s funeral, and points out many of Henson’s human flaws. Do you want to know this about your heroes? Does it make some people feel better to know their heroes have flaws like them? Why a new documentary 34 years after Henson’s death? Probably because Disney owns the Muppets now and has a streaming network for such a project–they need to keep Muppet shows pumping money into the brand. And we can’t get enough of new insight into the one-of-a-kind Henson. Ultimately Ron Howard doesn’t put a lot of himself in this documentary as he has done so many personal projects in the past. But even diehard Henson fans will find some new tidbits here, especially from Henson’s pre-Sesame Street days.
As we discussed previously at borg in our reviews of books on The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Jim Henson, and a documentary on Big Bird actor Carol Spinney, by all accounts Jim Henson was the most collaborative creator and co-worker in the history of… well, ever. This documentary provides even more evidence of that.
Jim Henson–Idea Man is streaming now on Disney+.
