The 5th Best Holiday Movie Ever: Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)

Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas
I am not sure how many of you have heard of this. It isn't the most famous Christmas movie, nor the most successful, but it might be the sweetest. And as much as I want to roll my eyes and groan, I just found the sugary sweetness of Emmet Otter to be too sincere and too honest. You can't hate. You can only surrender to its warm fuzziness and wrap up in it like a warm blanket.

Directed by the late genius Jim Henson, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas tells the story of an incredibly poor mother and son, who are struggling everyday to find enough money to eat. These are incredibly selfless people - I mean, uh, otters, and the one thing they want for Christmas is to get a nice gift for each other. There is a holiday pageant coming up so they both decide to enter to win the cash prize. But there is some stiff competition in the pageant as a hard rock band (The Riverbottom Nightmare Band, full of the meanest and slimiest animals) is ready to rock its way to a pageant victory.

So that's the plot. It's simple enough. What makes Emmet Otter a cut above other family holiday entertainment is its realism. A prevailing sense of sadness hangs over the first half of the film, when Emmet laments the death of his father and how he can't get enough work to provide for his mom. This isn't happy stuff. But Henson and Co. use this to teach valuable lessons to children about what is important in life - sticking by your family and being selfless and caring.

There are a few moments that are completely memorable. I loved them as a kid and I still love them now. There is an extended sequence when Emmet and his mother see the river has frozen over. They slide down a hill to the frozen river, and then run back up the hill to slide down again. Something about watching puppets running, sliding, running, sliding, and laughing hysterically the whole time - well, it doesn't really get old. The scene goes on and on and on, but that's fine. Emmet's life is so bleak that to actually see him break into joyful laughter is like sunshine bursting through the clouds. Henson lets this scene drag on because he knows the audience wants it to continue. Let the laughter go on a little bit longer...just a little bit, before Emmet has to go back to reality.

So there you go. I probably have to turn in my Man Card for liking this film. But I guarantee that in the privacy of his TV room, even the most macho guy is smiling at this movie. They just won't admit it!

I mean, look at this face! How could you hate this face???




MVP: Clearly Jim Henson. The man truly was a genius. Emmet Otter was one of his first experiments with using puppets to create a world and tell a long form story. Had the experiments been unsuccessful, we may have not seen The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, etc. etc. He balances the film with the right amount of sentimentality and humor.


BEST LINE: At the pageant, the Riverbottom Nightmare Band sings a song about how bad they are. But because this is ultimately a kid's film, the evil things they sing about include:

"We know we're a mess.
But I does not like to be clean.
We don't brush our teeth'
Cause our toothache can help us stay mean!"

Silly, I know, but I laughed.


TRIVIA: When the movie first came out in 1977, Kermit the Frog gave a short introduction. It had a nice impact; here was a familiar face giving us a brief tour to this new little world. Unfortunately, when the Henson Company gave the Muppets to Disney, they had to edit out the intro because they no longer controlled the rights. Which is a bummer. If you can find the old DVD from a few years ago, you can probably get the version with Kermie's intro...