Jim Henson Idea Man

Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024) is about the man who created Kermit the Frog and Sesame Street. The documentary follows his career chronologically, but what it is actually interested in is that he never stayed with one thing and always wanted to move on to the next. The material comes from Henson's own archive. His family gave Ron Howard wide access, and home movies, drawings, experimental shorts and previously unreleased recordings are used. Its most interesting section is that Henson always regarded puppetry as a stopover. He wanted to make films and saw the puppets as a way into television; then the stopover became his life's work, and that troubled him. There is a darker side too. He buried himself in the work and was away from home for long stretches, and his wife Jane Henson says so plainly on camera; they separated in 1986. Henson died suddenly in May 1990 at fifty three, of a bacterial infection. The documentary covers the memorial service, at which nobody wore black, at his own request. Ron Howard directed, for Disney+. It runs 108 minutes. Good for: the Muppets, creative biography, and the history of television. Less good for: made with the family, it enters the hard subjects and leaves them quickly. The chronological structure is familiar and takes no formal risk. The section on his death moves fast.