The Muppet Christmas Carol [DVD]

Product Information

Many fans have found new reasons to complain about this DVD release. First, there was the inaccurate press release Disney issued claiming the four films would be presented exclusively in fullscreen. Once that was corrected and the discs' specifications clarified, a new issue arose. For all of Muppet Christmas Carol's previous home video releases, an extended cut of the film was presented. This included the 3-minute musical number "When Love is Gone", performed by Belle to Scrooge as a young man (with the elderly miser listening in). Tasha: It’s only a few minutes! It isn’t that long! And it’s just about our last touchpoint for young, emotional Scrooge before his heart hardened. So he’s the focus here, not his minimally developed love interest! Only one supplement from the film's first DVD release has not been presented here, but it's a substantial one. "Frogs, Pigs, and Humbug: Unwrapping a New Holiday Classic" was a (then) newly-produced 22-minute making-of featurette hosted by Brian Henson, Gonzo, and Rizzo. It combined on-set interview clips with Michael Caine and some of the Muppet performers

A Charlie Brown Christmas (Peanuts Deluxe Holiday Collection) • A Chipmunk Christmas (Alvin and the Chipmunks Classic Holiday Gift Set) Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving (10th Anniversary Edition) • Shrek the Halls • Santa Buddies: The Legend of Santa Paws Susana Polo: Oh, to the contrary. Though it was cut from the theatrical version, “When Love is Gone” was included haphazardly in home video versions. All the copies my family happened to own, from VHS to modern day, included the scene. It’s always been there for me. And yeah, I think it suuuuuuuuu— I mean, uh, I think it’s the weakest part of the film. But how did it hit you, fresh to the glory of Muppet Christmas Carol? Susana: See, now this is an interesting flip. I’ve basically never seen the movie without that scene, given that I was in elementary school when it was in theaters. It was not actually clear to me until just now that Katzenberg excised the entirety of that character beat. That was an extremely dumbass thing of him to do. And it makes me doubly glad that Disney Plus has restored it. Theatrical Release: December 11, 1992 / Running Time: 86 Minutes (theatrical cut), 89 Minutes (extended cut) / Rating: Gwith funny 10-year retrospection from the three participants. With an irreverent tone and genuine insider insight (including some footage of the Muppeteers performing under the specially-built planks), this was a great and memorable featurette. It would have been a better and more relevant inclusion than the new Pepe Profiles piece and most Muppet fans would surely rather have this ported over than yet another cropped presentation of the movie. It's also disappointing that the film's original theatrical trailer wasn't included this time around either, because obviously it's sitting in Disney vaults and is free from any rights issues that might plague trailers for the Disney-acquired Muppet films. It’s just also that I object to “When Love Is Gone” on the grounds of what makes a good musical. The song itself isn’t all that good, is performed stiffly, and is staged uncreatively, but more than that, it takes the viewer on an overlong detour with a character we barely know and who is about to leave the narrative entirely — marking it as a real outlier in a field of absolute banger musical sequences. Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment • A Very Playhouse Disney Holiday • Disney Channel Holiday Why is the visual staging of this solo number so unutterably boring? She never even takes her hands out of her cute little Victorian muff. [ Ed. note: While gathering images to lay out this post I discovered that Belle is actually not wearing a muff at all, she just keeps her hands so still and pinned to her stomach for the whole song that I Mandela Effect-ed one into existence. I am noting this in case you too believed that Belle was a muff-wearer.] Why on earth wasn’t this number designed to be a shared song between Belle, young Scrooge, and older Scrooge from the get-go? We can still culminate with Belle and Present Scrooge harmonizing — that’s perfect and I have no notes.

A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008) • The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005) • Jim Henson's Dog City: The Movie The song was included for subsequent American video releases and TV airings of the movie prior to the 2012 Blu-Ray edition, which only includes the theatrical cut albeit with a different edit of the sequence. This version of the film has since aired on ABC Family and was released theatrically in 2020. The song is also removed in the UK and Region 2 DVD release. The issue of this cut was discussed by director Brian Henson in the film's DVD audio commentary recorded in 2002 (again, except on the UK DVD release, which omits the commentary as well). The scene was included as an extra when the film was released in the iTunes Store, and on Disney+ in 2019. Brian Henson announced at D23 Expo 2022 that starting on December 11, 2022 (exactly 30 years to the release date), the song would be reinstated into the film on Disney+ for the first time in high definition. This version of the movie was released two days early on December 9 under the "extras" section. Songs: "Scrooge", "Good King Wenceslas", "One More Sleep 'Til Christmas", "Marley and Marley", When Love is Gone", "It Feels Like Christmas", "Christmas Scat", "Bless Us All", "Thankful Heart", "When Love is Found/It Feels Like Christmas"Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons • Dinosaurs: The Complete Third and Fourth Seasons But none of this is what I was expecting a longtime Muppet Christmas Carol fan to object to — here I thought most people who wanted this song gone would just feel like it was out of place in a movie full of Muppets to have a dramatic, melancholy, Muppet-less number, with two humans navigating their extremely rudimentary love story, and not a puppet in sight. Is that in your calculus at all when you think about cutting this scene? What are your big objections here? A seven-second Muppet Studios logo (accompanied by a few chords from "The Muppet Show" theme) now appears before the film starts. It's actually not a part of either version's video file, but plays as an introduction the way those annoying FBI warnings and the new and "improved" Disney DVD logo do.