High Nostalgia, Mediocre Musicality: A Christmas Together By John Denver & The Muppets!

The Good: Moments of vocals, Moments of arrangement
The Bad: SHORT, Some of the vocals, Not overly original for a number of the songs
The Basics: A Christmas Together is an accurate soundtrack of the John Denver and The Muppets Christmas special that is a tougher sell on its own.


The winter holiday season is a time filled with nostalgia and in my household there is more than a little irony. My wife and I have over a decade between us, yet it seems one of our common experiences are seeing many of the same holiday specials on television and having a familiarity with the soundtracks to those specials. The irony comes from the fact that most of those specials were new when I was a child and I have no real emotional attachment to them, but my wife is a fan and given the opportunity to have music on tonight, she eagerly suggested A Christmas Together by John Denver And The Muppets.

A Christmas Together is a fun Christmas album for anyone who loves The Muppets, but it is not an extraordinary musical experience. Unlike some Christmas albums that showcase the vocal talents of those involved, A Christmas Together tries to find balance between The Muppets (and, let's face it, it is hard to consider Beaker and Dr. Honeydew as great vocalists!) and John Denver. Some Christmas albums attempt to give the primary artist a chance to show off their songwriting talents in the attempt to try to make an iconic new Christmas song; John Denver fails to make the next great holiday song with "A Baby Just Like You." The result is an album that is marginally fun and high on nostalgia without a lot of objective quality or originality to it.

With only thirteen songs, clocking out at 35:25, A Christmas Together illustrates the problem with converting old albums to c.d.; it is very short for the capacity of a c.d. and does not use the medium incredibly well. John Denver shares vocal credit on most of the songs with The Muppets (vocalized by the likes of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, etc.) and John Denver plays guitars on most of the tracks. The Muppets are accompanied by an orchestra and neither Denver, nor any of the Muppets, were involved in producing A Christmas Together; this is a very true soundtrack for the television special by the same name.

Instrumentally, A Christmas Together is very traditional and straightforward. While the guitars are more noticeable and folksy on "The Christmas Wish," that is the exception to the rule for the musical accompaniment on the album. The piano, flutes, percussion and string orchestral accompaniment is very straightforward on A Christmas Together. Despite the cover of "Little Saint Nick," most of the tracks are traditional Christmas carols that are familiar in their tunes and arrangements. The album features two (essentially) original tracks in the form of John Denver's "A Baby Just Like You" and a medley that begins with John Denver's appeal to listeners to protect the environment (which is relevant even now!), but continues with two arrangements of other Christmas carols.

On the vocal front, A Christmas Together is a celebration of nostalgia as opposed to great vocalizations. Miss Piggy leads "Christmas Is Coming" and the whole ensemble of The Muppets breaks out on "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." The rest of the songs have a few Muppets and John Denver performing and vocally Denver is the quality voice. For those not familiar with Animal, the sound of him providing backing vocals is not a revelatory musical experience. John Denver is able to showcase his smooth vocal talents on "Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913." Most of the rest of the album is good, but a mix of vocal stylings that are more nostalgia-evoking than objectively wonderful.

That is the success and failure of A Christmas Together; those who love The Muppets are likely to love the album, but those who do not have the nostalgia tied to it are more likely to be indifferent, at best, to the music. The best track is "The Peace Carol," the weak link is "When The River Meets The Sea."

For other Christmas albums, please visit my reviews of:
The Gift - Kenny Rogers
Oh Blue Christmas - A Fine Frenzy
These Are Special Times - Celine Dion

5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Aging Poorly: The Dark Crystal Does Not Hold Up!

The Good: Good puppet work, Decent voice acting, Elements of the story
The Bad: A ton of exposition, Minimal character development, Pacing
The Basics: Hardly audacious or even interesting, The Dark Crystal is a tough sell these days!


One of my wife’s favorite films of all time is Labyrinth (reviewed here!) and the circles she travels in in fantasy geekdom seem somewhat surprisingly (to me, at least) divided into two camps: those who love Labyrinth and those who have an affection for The Dark Crystal. Personally, I think that comes down to positive childhood memories for either camp, but rather than dispute it, we figured it was time to rewatch The Dark Crystal. Both my wife and I had seen The Dark Crystal only once, in our respective childhoods and neither of us had been grabbed by it or remembered it particularly well. In fact, all I truly recalled about it was the end and the liquefying of the “soul” (“essence”) of characters, which made them into slaves.

Having now watched The Dark Crystal as an adult, I have to say I am proud of my younger self and my current self; both of us managed to stay awake the entire movie (which is not something my wife may honestly say about the experience!). The Dark Crystal is unfortunately boring, heavy on exposition to explain the setting and characters and suffers from a number of problems unrelated to the early 1980’s special effects.

On an alien world, inhabited by magical creatures and budding scientists, there is a schism between the power-hungry Skeksis and the docile Mystics. A thousand years ago, during the Great Convergence of the planet’s three suns, the Dark Crystal shattered and the Skeksis came to power. Following their exile, the Mystics kept to themselves while the Skeksis brutalized their planet. But now, both the Mystics and the Skeksis are down to only nine of their kind. When the Skeksis Emperor and the Great Mystic die simultaneously, it appears a prophecy is about to be fulfilled.

The prophecy declares that a Gelfling will restore the Dark Crystal and, in the process, reunite the Skeksis and Mystics and restore the planet. Jen is, to his knowledge, the last of the Gelflings (the Skeksis having killed off almost all of the rest of the Gelflings to prevent the prophecy from coming true) and the Great Mystic sends him to Aughra to get the shard. After the Great Mystic dies and disappears, Jen’s quest begins and he travels to Aughra’s observatory where he manages to find the Shard. Unfortunately, the Skeksis power vacuum has led to a struggle for the throne and the discredited Chamberlain sees Jen and the prophecy as his best chance to seize power. As the Mystics journey to the Dark Crystal’s location at the Skeksis’s castle, Jen and his new companion, Kira (another Gelfling who believes herself to be the last of her kind) must evade the Chamberlain, the Skeksis’s army of monstrous Garthim, and attempts to draw out their everlasting essence to be in the right place at the right time to execute the prophecy and save the world.

The Dark Crystal is one of those troubling films that does not seem to have any sense of audience. Far too simplistic for adults, The Dark Crystal nevertheless includes adult political elements and monstrous character designs for the Garthim and Skeksis. The film is a bit cerebral for children and the pacing is so slow it might only keep children awake based on their own sense of wonder at the film’s spectacle. In fact, The Dark Crystal has such a linear narrative that it is almost surprising that it ever developed such a fanbase (Jen walks the prescribed three days to Aughra’s in such an uneventful sequence that it had to have the Skeksis politics cut into it in order to illustrate the passage of time and actually have something happen!).

A vehicle of directors Jim Henson and Frank Oz, The Dark Crystal is notable for its use of puppets. Unlike the movies that feature the Muppets and have a blending of puppets and live-action characters interacting in the real world, The Dark Crystal is an almost entirely virtual setting populated by puppets. The world of The Dark Crystal is imaginative and (outside the animated exterior painting shots that look incredibly dated) has a realism that is very easy to get into. The look of the various races is distinct and the film was clearly created with a sense of wonder to it.

Unfortunately, that sense of visual wonder was not developed with a strong story in mind. In fact, the movie is one of the most bland, thematically-simplistic, fantasy films of all time. Lacking in any distinctive or iconic quotes, The Dark Crystal is a painfully uncomplicated hero journey where the film belabors establishing the tenants of the world it depicts as opposed to allowing the viewer to truly become immersed in it. There is no joy to be had in how formulaic the film is and The Dark Crystal does not so much develop characters as much as it simply resolves its own plot points.

The result is a film that is virtually impossible to go back to; it did not captivate my wife or me . . . but then, we’re Labyrinth people.

For other fantasy films, please visit my reviews of:
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen
Oz The Great And Powerful

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for a listing of movie reviews from Best To Worst!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

The Mixed Bag That Is Storytelling: The Storyteller

The Good: Good acting, Nice puppeteering, Some decent stories
The Bad: Not all for children, Use of medium
The Basics: Every night, the Storyteller sits down and tells a classic folk tale reimagined by the Henson workshop over nine wonderful episodes.


The Storyteller was a short-lived series put out by Jim Henson's production company in 1987. Fantasy often gets underrated and largely, The Storyteller was swept under the rug by network television. It is, however, now available on DVD and it has a great deal to recommend it.

The idea behind The Storyteller is rather simple: a gnarly old storyteller sits down by the fire each night (in this case, each episode) and tells the audience a story, usually by telling the story to his dog. As he tells the story, it is acted out by the mythical characters in the tale.

Stories in The Storyteller include:
"Hans My Hedgehog" - The tale of a hedgehog who was raised by human parents who is ostracized by the community and flees into exile. Later in his life, he saves a king who awards him his daughter in a Beauty And The Beast-style story,

"The Three Ravens" - A wicked stepmother story wherein the new bride of the king sees the princes as threats to her power so she turns them into birds, a spell that may only be broken by the princesses three continuous years of silence,

"The True Bride" - The story of a girl who flees an abusive troll with the help of a white lion only to learn that her betrothed is under a spell from another troll. With the help of the white lion and her own cunning, she must thwart the trolls and win back her love,

"The Soldier and Death" - A charming tale wherein a soldier manages to bring peace about and end death, with intriguing consequences,

"Fearnot" - The story of a young man who is incapable of feeling fear (though he desperately wants to), so he goes on a quest to discover what being scared is all about,

and "A Story Short" wherein the Storyteller himself tells the story of how he became an entertainer to a king by coming up with a story a day for a year to pay for his trespassing.

There are also three other stories.

The common thread throughout the series is the storyteller and his narration of each story feels like all of the good things you might have remembered about your parents reading to you at night. And if they never did, well, this is a chance to have that experience. With visuals.

The cool thing about The Storyteller is that each tale is told using an array of live action (actors) characters as well as puppeteered creatures. So, for instance, in "The Soldier & Death," death is a small puppetted creature the soldier is able to capture and put in a sack. The puppet work is remarkably well done.

The wide array of guest stars makes each story come alive, as well. Amusingly enough, with the success of The Lord Of The Rings, the back of the DVD box boasts the participation of both Sean Astin and Sean Bean. They give wonderful performances in their episodes and it is refreshing to see them in other things. Other guest stars who appear in The Storyteller include Miranda Richardson (who I like from Blackadder) and Jonathan Pryce (from Brazil).

The Storyteller himself is played by John Hurt and he is wonderful in the role. His performance never overshadows the tale he is telling, which allows for the programs to flow rather well. Hurt, however, has an amazing voice that is both soothing and expressive, making him an idea storyteller.

The only drawback of the DVD set is that if one sits down and watches them in a single sitting, the show takes on a repetitive feel. Outside that, the tales are universal folk tales (many of which are compiled from multiple stories in order to make up a half hour program each time) that are brought to life with a magical sense of realism through the use of the puppets and actors.

However, some of them get strangely creepy or suggestively graphic and they may scare younger viewers. But then, who said storytime was just for children?

For other works on HBO, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Carnivale
True Blood - Season Four
Rome
Extras
Six Feet Under
Da Ali G Show

7.5/10

For other television reviews, be sure to check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing of all that I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Arguably The Perfect Children's Movie: Labyrinth Is Fun For Anyone!

The Good: Creative, Good message, Decent effects, Moments of acting, Moments of character, DVD bonus features.
The Bad: Skewed toward children.
The Basics: Labyrinth is a memorable film which effectively melds a human and puppet cast in a fantasy adventure for all ages!


It is a very rare thing that I qualify my movie reviews. After all, I am one of the people who consistently argues that there is merit in comparing Casablanca to The Wedding Singer and that the rating continuum ought to be between The Empire Strikes Back and Master Of Disguise (all movies) as opposed to A New Hope Vs. V: The Television Series (a scale for each genre). Great movies will stand on their own and define the best and virtually every genre will have a perfect film, but if it doesn't, I'm fine with that, too.

So, when my wife and I decided to share our favorite films with one another, there was a lot of pressure for me to like hers. She endured Brazil (reviewed here!) for me and she was not impressed by it. I know that at some point in the past, I had seen Labyrinth, but I could not remember it well enough to write about it. As it turns out, Labyrinth is my wife's favorite film of all time and there was some irony in the fact that I reviewed the soundtrack to the film first and have only now just reviewed Labyrinth. And the qualification by which I am giving this a "perfect" rating is in the context of children's movie. This is, quite possibly, the perfect movie for children and in that context, it is hard not to appreciate the film for exactly what it is. And it is wonderful, but outside the context of a children's movie, it would be hard for me to consider it perfect.

Sarah is a spoiled girl who is studying for a school play when she is forced to rush home to babysit her infant brother while her parents go out for the night. Irked by his incessant crying, Sarah makes a wish for goblins to come and take her brother, Toby, away. Much to her surprise, Toby is abducted by goblins and she is visited by the Goblin King, Jareth, who informs her that he will turn Toby into a goblin in thirteen hours, if Sarah is unable to work her way through the magical labyrinth to his castle!

So, Sarah sets out on an adventure through a seemingly endless maze that surrounds Jareth's castle. She struggles to find her path at first as a fairy-killing dwarf named Hoggle refuses to help her. A friendly worm shows her the way into the labyrinth and soon she and Hoggle are exploring the puzzles the labyrinth has to offer, like mysterious doors with live knockers and oubliettes. Sarah's compassion is tested when she comes upon a wounded furry beast named Ludo and she soon learns that nothing is what it appears. As Sarah gets closer, though, the Goblin King sings and intervenes to try to keep Sarah from reaching his lair.

Labyrinth is a lot of fun and one almost has to forget that this film predates the rise of virtual characters. As a result, the puppets performed throughout the movie are treated as completely viable characters and the work on them is absolutely amazing. In fact, the detail and style of movement for characters like Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus are so realistic as to make one forget they are not real. The only characters who pop up who look like puppets are the Fireys, gangly creatures who tear off their own heads and perform a ridiculous musical number. As well, when Jareth sings to the goblins about magic, some of the goblins levitate or jump slowly through the air and in those sequences, a few goblins look more like puppets than real live goblins. But this is quibbling.

The film has a very valuable lesson for children (of all ages!) which is that it is important to look beyond the obvious to study the reality of one's situation, not just the hype or appearance surrounding it. There is irony in the fact that David Bowie - some of whose works succeeded entirely on the hype surrounding the artist as opposed to the merit of the project - plays Jareth and helps Sarah realize that not all is as it seems. Labyrinth is not a Bowie project that trades only on hype or his celebrity.

In addition to a great message for kids and a wonderful execution of an impressive imagination, Labyrinth follows a character on a vital journey of self discovery. Sarah starts the film spoiled and bored. Watching her is painful and she is instantly unlikable - despite being played by Jennifer Connelly. As the film goes on, Sarah learns the value of friendship and giving her word and being able to trust the word of others. As Hoggle comes under the influence of Jareth - to avoid being dipped in the infamous Bog Of Eternal Stench - Sarah learns the hard way the consequences of trusting the untrustworthy. Sarah grows in the course of the film and she goes from lacking in confidence and expecting others to hand her everything to being a strong young woman who solves riddles and problems on her own.

Also fun, especially for younger audiences, are the songs and dances that occur throughout the film. Jareth sings to Toby and his goblin hordes and the songs are energetic and danceable and will keep kids engaged when the movie becomes otherwise too serious for them. But the movie is not only enjoyable for children. Adults are likely to marvel at the technical wizardry of the film and appreciate the skill of the effects, as well as the kitsch value of David Bowie's pants in the movie. Those who have watched Jennifer Connelly grow into a serious and professional actress will be impressed by the ambitious start she had here.

Indeed, while David Bowie makes an appropriately intense and shifty goblin king, it is Connelly as Sarah who moves much of the movie forward as an interesting character work. She is equally believable as the spoiled girl running to her room whining as she is as the certain and smart young woman passing through the doors toward the Goblin City (as opposed to certain death). But what Connelly does best is help sell the reality of the virtual characters. The way she looks at and talks to the puppets convinces the viewer of their reality in her world and she helps sell the premise of the film perfectly!

On DVD, there are at least three versions. The ultimate edition is a two-disc version which contains several featurettes on the making of the movie, interviews with the cast, a commentary track and original sketch art for the production design. There are trailers and other goodies and fans will certainly get their money's worth out of the two-disc version.

In other words, Labyrinth might well be a great movie to grow up on and a perfect one to revisit at various stages of life. That timeless quality makes it not only a great value, but a truly great film.

For other fantasy films, please check out my reviews of:
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland

10/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



| | |