By John Corrado

In his new documentary Jim Henson Idea Man, filmmaker Ron Howard crafts an enjoyable biographical portrait of the creator of The Muppets, Jim Henson.

It was the genius and creativity of Henson, who hand-stitched Kermit the Frog out of his mother’s coat, that gave birth to these iconic characters. A fledgling filmmaker and puppeteer, Jim got his start alongside his future wife Jane doing puppet shows for late night television, and getting hired to do commercials starring their felt characters (many of which were comically violent).

Henson’s drive to innovate across different art forms nearly led him to designing a series of nightclubs with elaborate projection systems, before being approached by the Children’s Television Network to create Sesame Street.

It was this groundbreaking children’s program that would ultimately define his career, including developing a working relationship with Frank Oz, which helped inform the dynamic between their characters Ernie and Bert. But Henson wasn’t intent to stop there, and embarked on creating a primetime variety show aimed at older audiences, which would become The Muppet Show (when networks were reluctant to pick up a more adult show featuring The Muppets, Henson made a pilot subtitled Sex and Violence to drive home his point).

We’ve seen some of this material covered in other documentaries like Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, but it didn’t focus specifically on Henson himself. Howard’s film offers a more personal portrait of an artistically ambitious man who was constantly creating and innovating, sometimes not sleeping for a few days at a time. The film also touches on how this impacted his family life, including the eventual breakdown of his marriage to Jane Henson.

The success of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show would lead to Henson developing The Muppet Movie in 1979, and pursuing even more expansive creative endeavours with ambitious fantasy films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in the 1980s. The final moments of Jim Henson Idea Man show how he was just getting started in terms of pushing creative boundaries, when his life was tragically cut short by illness in 1990.

At 108 minutes, Jim Henson Idea Man does at times feel like it is only scratching the surface of Henson’s brilliance and what made him tick (his more spiritual and philosophical beliefs are only briefly mentioned). Similar to the Disney Plus documentary The Beach Boys, this is another doc that covers so much material it feels like it could have run even longer than its just under two hour running time.

But Howard’s documentary remains entertaining and informative, thanks to the wealth of archival footage and interviews with family and close collaborators (including his son Brian Henson, who was set up to take over the mantle of directing). The film features some more creative touches (the subjects are seated in a boxy white set inspired by Henson’s experimental 1969 film The Cube), with its fast-paced editing keeping things moving along.

Throughout the film, Howard uses old footage of Orson Welles interviewing Henson and Oz, seated with their characters Kermit and Fozzie Bear. In his idiosyncratic way, Welles gushes over the artistic genius of The Muppets. Henson was a genius, indeed, and one that, like the title suggests, was bursting with creativity and ideas. As such, Jim Henson Idea Man is a fine tribute to him.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)

Jim Henson Idea Man will be available to stream exclusively on Disney+ as of May 31st.