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Premiere magazine honors "The Muppet Movie"

By Rich Boniface and Phillip Chapman
June 16, 1999

In the July issue of Premiere magazine, they honor the top "50 unsung classics" of all time, and The Muppet Movie is one of their favorites.

"How many of these great movies have you seen?"

The table of contents lists an entry for page 97 titled "Lost & Profound." The text under the heading says, "Midnight Run was a great movie. So was Dawn of the Dead. And The Muppet Movie. And Flesh and Bone. Premiere pays tribute to 50 wonderful films that, for whatever unfortunate reason, never got the attention they deserved."

In the introduction to the article, it says the movies are listed in alphabetical order. They don't specifically list where in the top 50 each movie is ranked.

On page 102, they have the following entry "The Muppet Movie (1979, James Frawley)".

"The formula was like a peculiar concoction from the lab of Muppet scientist Dr. Bunsen honeydew and his assistant, Beaker--a mix of Bambi and Thumper, Hope and Crosby, and Cheech and Chong. Still, The Muppet Movie managed to turn a healthy profit while elevating the fuzzy, moralistic tone of kids' flicks into an energetic, self-referential satire, with enough heart to match its wit. By the film's conclusion, one can't help but wonder if the earnest Kermit the Frog might indeed be a worthy successor to Jimmy Stewart's aw-shucks legacy."

It is great to see that even twenty years later people still appreciate what a pioneering and groundbreaking film that The Muppet Movie truly was. Like Walt Disney's Snow White, the first animated film in the 1930's, Jim Henson took puppetry to a level it had never been before, the silver screen. The movie industry hasn't been quite the same ever since.