Jim Henson’s death was the first – and probably the only – celebrity death that kicked me in the stomach. I’d grown up with Sesame Street, the The Muppet Show, and the Muppet Movie. I adored The Dark Crystal and enjoyed Labyrinth. I knew he was the man behind it all and his Kermit voice is so singular, every attempt to replicate it has been close but no cigar. I was happy to see Disney+ put out this doc… even if it’s not as good a memorial as teenage me would have wanted.

Idea Man is a documentary about Henson’s career… starting in local tv, then Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and the various movies and tv specials. They present a lot of great old footage of the early Muppets and interview his kids, his colleagues, and Rita Moreno (kind of randomly).

I knew most of the material already except for some ugliness in his personal life. Which, to be fair, Disney allowed… though cynically only because the dude’s been dead for decades. I notice they don’t say anything negatives about the brand. But maybe I don’t want to find out Kermit the Frog sniffs glue or Fozzy knocked over a liquor store.

What they assembled though is good enough. Not great but solid and informative. It’s a little uneven in terms of content, seemingly spending so much time on everything up to The Muppet Show that I wondered if they’d cover anything later. And some of those projects got short shrift… I feel bad for those Fraggles, for example (but, then again, maybe they were selling cigarettes to children).

While I’m sticking with my rating, the footage of his funeral was very moving. I’d heard about it before (just recently on an unrelated podcast, actually) but had never looked it up… it was both a moving and a joyful celebration. Almost worth a rating boost (almost).

This is a pretty good documentary about Henson and The Muppets… though I’ve seen better accumulated info elsewhere (Patrick Willems has a very good YouTube essay called The Rise and Fall of Muppet Cinema). But this Disney+ doc is fine and has better archival footage and interviews.

Score: 79