Follow That Bird, Part 2: On the Run

After reading Big Bird's depressing letter, Snuffy decides now is the time to visit his friend and lift hist spirits.  He sends a massive postcard detailing his plans and Big Bird is overjoyed.  He shares the news with his family, but hits a roadblock when they inquire about the type of bird Snuffy is.  When Big Bird tells them the truth, they forbid Snuffy from visiting, because birds are only supposed to be friends with birds.

So, Big Bird does what anyone would do in this situation and runs away in the middle of the night.

I'm sure he'll be just fine.

Soon, the news of Big Bird's disappearance hits the airwaves and that means it's time for our first celebrity cameo! Chevy Chase appears as the anchorman and, like Steve Martin and John Cleese before him, he makes the most of his one scene.

  

Never before has saying the name "Sesame Street" been so funny.

As the Sesame Street inhabitants watch, the report is turned over to our favorite reporter Kermit the Frog who explains that Big Bird has run away and intends to head back home.

 

I'm not sure if this counts as a cameo or not.

He interviews the Dodo family who are completely distraught over the loss of their new child. Wait, I meant they are completely excited to be on television and they leave the interview in order to watch themselves on TV. Yeah, we aren't supposed to care for these characters one bit.

 

The hatred of birds among children ages 3-7 increased 500% after this movie premiered.

Kermit then interviews Miss Finch who swears to hunt down Big Bird and kill him, I mean, return him to his "proper" family if it's the last thing she does. Big Bird watches her threat on a store's television set and psychs himself up for his "three-hour" journey (because it took two hours to fly there, and he knows walking will take longer, obviously).

I miss the days when all store windows had multiple TV sets showing plot-relevant news stories.

The gang on Sesame Street decide that the best course of action will be to split up and drive across the country in order to intercept Big Bird's path. Akin to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, we get five wacky modes of transportation to follow:

1) Gordon, Olivia, Linda, and Cookie Monster are taking Gordon's VW, because it's smart to bring a monster that devours everything in sight on a rescue mission.

2) The Count heads off in his Countmobile alone, probably because no one wants to be stuck on a 24-hour car ride with the Count.

  

That's one! One person counting out loud the entire time! Ah-ah-ah!

3) Super Grover is going to fly by himself. Um, we don't want to end up with two missing Muppets, Mr. Movie!

4) Bert and Ernie take their biplane that they always have that Ernie knows how to fly like always.

5) And Maria and Telly Monster join Oscar in his Sloppy Jalopy, which comes with Homer the Honker, since the car's horn doesn't work. Oscar's only agreeing to help because he's sure they will end up coming home empty handed. Does that mean he thinks Big Bird is going to get killed? Probably.

 This is the cool car, by the way.  Shotgun!

As the gang fans out, Big Bird continues teaching all sorts of great lessons to the viewing audience, like it's a good idea to hitchhike with random turkey farmers because they'll probably turn out to be kindly country music sensation Waylon Jennings. And he'll sing you a nice tune encouraging you to stick to your decision to run away from your home.

"Ain't No Road Too Long" is this film's "Movin' Right Along."

But lurking on the sidelines is a pair of ne'er-do-well brothers named Sam and Sid Sleaze who run a shoddy carnival that swindles kids out of their well earned nickels.  Played by Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas of SCTV, the Sleazes get an idea as to how to increase revenue at their crappy park.  They need to get their hands on that missing bird and make him their main attraction!

Now these guys are just what Sesame Street villains would be like: pure evil without any sense of realism.

Uh-oh!  Hopefully Big Bird will manage to stay far away from these two.  Tune in tomorrow to see if he does!  (Spoiler alert: he doesn't.)

Follow That Bird, Part 1: Bye Bye Birdie

Before we get started, would you please rise for the Grouch Anthem?

If you politely agreed to that request, then you missed the entire point of the Grouch Anthem.

The existence of a Sesame Street movie creates an odd sensation.  It is common for television shows to be adapted into films, but rarely do we see this with long-running daytime shows that produce over 100 episodes a year.  Just to give you an idea as to how rare this phenomenon is, let me remind you that 2012's Dark Shadows was the first movie ever based on a pre-existing soap opera.

The fact that it is a show for preschoolers makes the leap to screen even weirder.  Try to imagine a property like Mister Roger's Neighborhood getting a theatrical release.  It wouldn't happen because preschoolers are not the target audience for movie producers, but their parents are.  Why would a parent take a harrowing trip to the movie theater to see a show that their kids watch everyday anyway.  It's not like little kids are thinking, "Oh, a movie adaptation of Teletubbies will allow the writers to tackle deeper, harder-hitting issues that the television format doesn't enable them to cover."

So, who is a Sesame Street movie for?  Well, given that Follow That Bird premiered in 1985, 15 years worth of kids would make a nice large audience, and they probably wouldn't mind a trip back to Sesame Street.  But, the tone of the movie would be a little different.  Gone are the blatant educational sketches or whimsical animated inserts.  Instead, we are focusing only on Big Bird as a character who just happens to have been the star of the biggest children's show of all time.  And it was time to teach kids a different kind of lesson.  A lesson about life.

The movie starts with the assumption that you know all about Sesame Street and it's inhabitants, so instead of introducing the existing characters, we meet a group of avian social workers discussing their next case.

Because that's what kids love: meetings!

The head of the Featherd Friends adoption agency informs the board of a troubling situation in which a 6-year-old bird has been discovered living by himself in the middle of an urban city without any other birds to care for him.  It almost seems like a self-parody that the movie's premise is based on an issue that the show never bothers to address because...it's just a magical kids show.

Nope, this movie is going to get heavy.

I've proposed my theory about the history of Big Bird's family and this movie jumps on that assumption and runs with it.  Despite Big Bird's evident contentment for where he is, the board believes birds must be surrounded by their own kind in order to thrive.  In order to save Big Bird from his life of abandonment, the case worker Miss Finch agrees to track him down and place him with a nice family of birds in Illinois so that he can live a better life.

Miss Finch: Worse than Doc Hopper, Nicky Holiday, Jareth, the Skeksis, and the city of New York combined.

This brings us to the movie proper as we see Sesame Street, remade for the big screen!

There are actually buildings across the street now?!

Sesame Street has never looked busier or more realistic as all your favorite Muppet and non-Muppet characters walk around and going about their daily business.  Big Bird enters on roller skates and interacts with a chirping bird, showing that he is just fine exactly where he is.  But shortly after he takes a tumble into Oscar's garbage pile, Miss Finch discovers him, and finds that her assumptions are true: Big Bird is living in filth and needs someone to take care of him.

Enter "Imperial March Theme" here.

She discusses with him the opportunity to live a life with birds, far from Sesame Street, where he can finally have a real family.  Big Bird is unsure at first, but he starts to imagine the perks of having his own mother and father taking care of him.  His fantasy shows that his lack of parents and siblings has bothered him for quite sometime, and finally, his dreams are about to come true!

Big Bird's idyllic family.  In Technicolor.

Big Bird agrees to leave, much to the dismay of all his friends and neighbors.  Despite their suggestion that they are his family already, Miss Finch reminds them that they are not birds and are, therefore, unfit to raise Big Bird.  Big Bird makes his rounds, saying goodbye to all.  He leaves Snuffy in charge of his nest, and promises to write every day.  The simple-minded and loyal Snuffy promises to visit him at his new home, and everybody cries for a bit.

This was when I thought, "What would someone who had never seen Sesame Street before think of this scene?"

After Big Bird promises to write and count and read and breathe and eat, he bids farewell, as Miss Finch coldly tells him to not look back at his old friends.

Why...why would someone say that to a child?

Big Bird flies (by plane) to Oceanview, IL where he meets his new family at the airport, the Dodos.  And much like their name, they are complete imbeciles.  After it takes them a while to accpet that this giant yellow bird is the one they were supposed to meet, they welcome Big Bird to the family, calling him "Big Dodo."

This is not going to end well.

They drive Big Bird to their home out in the suburbs where it's quite easy to tell which house on the block is theirs.

It's the one that says, "Dodos" on the mailbox.

Big Bird writes a letter to his friends back on Sesame Street, explaining all the weird things his new family does.  None of them are actually too weird (except for their daily worm hunt that never results in any worms) but they are too different for Big Bird to handle all at once.

This is ridiculous.

The final and most crucial difference that are shown is Big Bird's adoptive parents finding themselves unable to kiss him good night.  This hits Big Bird the hardest.

He closes his letter, "I should be happy here.  What's wrong with me?"

That's the kind of movie we are getting ourselves into.  Tomorrow, Big Bird decides enough is enough and starts his long journey home.  Adventures will unfold, but there will be a lot of strife along the way.  Get ready to follow that bird.