It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie

It’s a Wonderful Life is the string along which pearls of satire like Cirque De So Lamé are strung, after the manner of those divertissements in The Nutcracker. Mel Brooks plays the jolly Snowman who isn’t in the script, and Miss Piggy plays Nicole Kidman (who’s in Moulin Rouge!).

The theme is acutely serious business these days, and even figures in Louis Malle’s last film. This writer mentioned the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills by way of illustrating a note on The Greatest Story Ever Told. It was subsequently announced that the theater would close to make way for a hotel.