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Universally beloved figures are increasingly rare these days, with a distressing number of our former heroes having been outed as one kind of monster or another in recent years. Jim Henson is a notable exception. The creator of the Muppets remains as revered today as he was during his too-short life, an enduring icon of wholesomeness whose legend has only grown since he died in 1990 at the age of 53. Among his legion of admirers is Ron Howard, whose documentary \u201cJim Henson Idea Man\u201d premiered at Cannes earlier this month and will be available to stream on Disney+ this Friday.<\/p>\n
A multihyphenate if ever there were one, the puppeteer, filmmaker, animator and actor is described here as both a \u201cboy genius\u201d and \u201cvery rare creature\u201d who was \u201cso internal and quiet that his inner life must have been sparkling.\u201d It\u2019s certainly true that his life\u2019s work sparkled, and not just Kermit and company: \u201cIdea Man\u201d also gives pride of place to \u201cThe Dark Crystal,\u201d \u201cFraggle Rock,\u201d \u201cThe Labyrinth\u201d and \u201cSesame Street,\u201d not to mention the more outr\u00e9 endeavors some of the film\u2019s interviewees would argue were his true \u2014 if unrealized \u2014 passion. <\/p>\n
Perhaps most revelatory to those who know Henson only as the father of the Muppets (which is to say, most people) is his experimental filmmaking, with 1965\u2019s Oscar-nominated \u201cTime Piece\u201d being the most emblematic of his sensibility. (Watching the short, it\u2019s difficult not to wish Henson had written and directed an episode of the original \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d before it went off the air that same year.) Playful and strange, it was partly born of his fixation on time and musicality \u2014 the idea that almost everything could be measured in beats and broken down to its temporal parts, including, most obviously, a life. His older brother Paul died in 1956 at the age of 26, a tragedy that puts the younger Henson\u2019s belief in the power of humor in a more revealing light.<\/p>\n
The usual archival footage and talking-head interviews are complemented by some fittingly clever animations, most of which serve as transitions between scenes or brief illustrations of how iconic Muppets were first created: the jacket and ping-pong balls that became Kermit, the basketball that was cut in half for Rowlf\u2019s head. This is when \u201cIdea Man\u201d is at its best, but unfortunately they feel like occasional stylistic flourishes rather than a driving force behind the documentary. Frank Oz, Henson\u2019s longtime collaborator and protege, is the most frequent interviewee, with Rita Moreno, Jennifer Connelly, and Henson\u2019s children all sharing stories as well.<\/p>\n
Henson grew up in rural Mississippi where, by his own admission, he never played with or even saw a puppet. His true passion, as with many children of his era, was television \u2014 the only reason he got into puppetry, in fact, was as a means of working on TV. In some respects, he was a victim of his own success: The bigger \u201cSesame Street\u201d got, the more he wanted to parlay its popularity into unrelated Broadway shows, ballets and even amusement parks that would allow him to explore his creativity in new ways. Henson is portrayed here as being creative and restless in equal measure, always afraid of being boxed in and prevented from pursuing his increasingly out-there ideas.<\/p>\n
That included \u201cThe Muppet Show: Sex and Violence,\u201d a 30-minute pilot that never received a series order because every network passed on it, not to mention a brief stint on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d that appears to have been yet another square-peg-in-a-round-hole situation. Henson died at the peak of his artistic and financial success, and one of the many tragedies of his untimely death is that we never got to see what he might have done with a blank check and total creative freedom.<\/p>\n
The result likely would have been less conventional than \u201cIdea Man,\u201d whose feel-good charms are undercut only slightly by its adherence to the tried-and-true nonfiction formula. It is, mostly for better but occasionally for worse, exactly what you\u2019d expect of a documentary about Jim Henson directed by Ron Howard: sweet, heartwarming and rather unadventurous. If it\u2019s easy to wish \u201cIdea Man\u201d were as bold as its subject, though, it\u2019s just as easy to be won over by this deservedly heartfelt tribute to him.<\/p>\n
View this article at Variety<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Jim Henson Idea Man\u2019 Review: A Heartfelt, If Safe, Tribute to a Singular Figure: Universally beloved figures are increasingly rare these days, with a distressing number of our former heroes having been outed as one kind of monster or another in recent years. Jim Henson is a notable exception. The creator of the Muppets remains
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