Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024)

TV-PG.  Jim Henson, according to this documentary, is a story of a fundamentally unproblematic man...with the exception of maintaining a healthy work / life balance.   That problem is there.  While this is a celebratory documentary about the guy who made Sesame Street and The Muppets, the Henson family do seem to have unresolved issues with their father's priority with his art over being a present father.  There is a reference to sex and violence, but in the most ironic way imaginable.

DIRECTOR: Ron Howard

Two truths.  1) This is a very touching documentary about a great man who changed the face of entertainment and influenced the cultural zeitgeist in an undeniable way.  2) Disney seems to be in the fluff piece documentaries, even if the guy was probably unimpeachable.  It's not like Ron Howard made a movie that completely avoided controversy.  It just seemed like Jim Henson's life was mostly a softball when it came to making an appreciative documentary.

The funny thing is, I knew what I signed up for.  I was the one who was showing the trailer to anyone who would watch.  There's something about Jim Henson that I think I like more than I actually do.  My dad was mildly obsessed with The Muppets.  Well, he was as obsessed as a reserved man probably was about things.  I remember episodes of The Muppet Show being treated as the apex of family friendly comedy in the house. To a certain extent, I've passed that down to my oldest daughter.  Admittedly, she in the new Muppets camp.  I'm talking about the Jason Segal one.  She's not wrong.  To be a little bit blasphemous, the Jason Segal Muppets movie is probably the funniest thing that the Jim Henson company has ever made.  It seems like I'm really dumping on the guy who created a whole new world of storytelling and changed the way that we think about entertainment.  But I think I probably need to be more honest before I start discussing the ins-and-outs of a documentary that absolutely adores its subject matter.  I'm in the camp of "I get the genius, but not everything that he made was necessarily a homerun." 

The best thing that the documentary does is sell me on the notion that Jim Henson was a genius.  Not only was he a genius, but he was one of them tortured geniuses.  Through intereviews and historical footage, we kind of get this picture of a man who really just wanted to create.  It wasn't necessarily about puppets.  Henson was almost a guy who learned to love his creations after they were created.  Instead, Henson was a guy who was just wired differently.  Sometimes that comes across as awkward or weird.  But mostly, Henson was a guy who wanted to play around with a camera until he saw something he liked.  There's that whole mantra, "If you enjoy what you do for a living, you never work a day in your life." This is where me and Henson are on the same page.  There's something incredibly sympathetic about how Henson views work and art.  Creation, especially when it comes to artistic expression, is seductive as heck.  By the way, the novel is on hold until the school year starts.  As insufferable as the following is, it's true.  Writing, when done under ideal conditions, is one of my favorite things to do.  Often, I find myself filling in moments between other things because I'm trying to avoid becoming Jim Henson.  But Henson understood that he would only really be fulfilled if he did things his way.  It's an odd investment into both himself and his sense of a future. It's why I love this documentary.  It's almost a warning of what could happen if obsession goes too far.

But there's something that's weird about the whole thing.  I think I'm just realizing this now.  As much as the name of this movie is called Idea Man, this movie absolutely be more of a cautionary tale.  I knew that Jim Henson died young.  In my head, it was cancer or something totally unavoidable.  Not so much.  This is the story of a man who worked himself to death.  And yet, it's a celebration of that spirit.  Henson was a guy who worked through pneumonia multiple times.  One of those times killed him.  It's this really weird tone that the movie takes.  (Note:  I started writing this in less than ideal conditions two days ago.  I am now trying to finish, replicating the vibe I had a couple days ago.  I almost guarantee that I'll fail to finish the thought that I had two days ago.)   Lord knows that I am not one to stifle genius or creativity, but there were lots of tortured artists who didn't pneumonia themselves to death.

There's almost a sense of admiration for a man who was so driven to keep working and keep creating that he just died because of his devotion to his work.  I love this guy.  He created amazing works.  But you are almost inhaling the subtext of a group of people who wish that Jim Henson was more self-aware about his priorities.  Brian Henson, throughout this film, is probably the most honest of all of his family about his father's death.  Again, all of this is done out of love, but Brian Henson seems like he would have loved to rewrite his life with a different outcome.  He's a guy who desperately needed a dad.  I get a lot of that out of Lisa Henson as well.  Part of the narrative that I picked up on this story was Henson's poor wife who seemed to understand him better than anyone on the planet, but also refused to march to the beat of his obsessive drum.

The funny thing about all of these comments from me is that Jim Henson genuinely seemed to be a mostly unproblematic person.  But this documentary, for all of its great stuff, kind of irons over the stuff that really was a problem.  There's that old adage in therapy, when people tend to trivialize their own trauma and problems, that people need to understand that their problems are important to them.  It may seem minor in the grand scheme of all of the horrible things out there.  But trauma is trauma and it should be treated as such.  I was a guy who loved Won't You Be My Neighbor? and I had none of these complaints.  But I also think that Fred Rogers was a guy who had different ambitions that kind of reflected the good he put out in the world.  While I love the things that Jim Henson made, there's something entirely too isolated about what he was creating.  Fred Rogers (good human being) was devoted to helping children.  Jim Henson (also good human being) was trying to find an outlet for his creativity.  I think that's probably why I'm a little harsher that some of the rough edges are kind of sanded out for this doc.

I hate that I harped on the negative stuff here because I loved watching this with my kids.  It's one of those things that made me want to rewatch Henson's stuff.  Part of me wanted to crack open some Muppet stuff.  The other part immediately started scheduling a viewing of Labyrinth in the garage.   And a lot of the burden of my criticisms lie on the fact that Disney+ seems to really embrace the overly adoring documentary.  I also don't deny that sometimes things don't hit me as hard as they hit other people.  But for what it is, Jim Henson: Idea Man mostly works.