A Belated Birthday Present

Every so often, I think of a comment my old podcast co-host Scott Renshaw would express on Twitter. To paraphrase, whenever Twitter would understandably seem to unite in memorializing a fallen celebrity, he’d point out that it’s a shame that we only seem to praise the brilliance of this or that actor, writer, filmmaker, etc., once they’ve passed on.

In that spirit, while I’m a day late — as the title of today’s post implies — I want to just spend a few words honoring Tim Curry. His 74th birthday was yesterday, and one of his very best performances is in an underrated Disney film, Muppet Treasure Island.

Last summer, I ranked the films of the Muppets at Slashfilm, and wound up causing a fair bit of consternation by suggesting that the 1996 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure story was the second-best movie with these felt creatures. (Please note that today’s post also is your daily Disney+ recommendation for exactly these reasons.)

I grew up in the 1990s, so I was right there for The Muppet Christmas Carol too, but while both that film and MTI have an incredibly enjoyable performance from the main human performer, only one of those films feels like a Muppet movie. One of them is wacky and anarchic and ridiculous; the other is not, dictated as much by the source material as by the somber mood among the Muppet crew after the passing of Jim Henson and Richard Hunt.

Anyway, Muppet Treasure Island is a very silly, very funny film anchored by a fiercely committed performance by Tim Curry. As Long John Silver, Curry has the very challenging role of playing opposite almost entirely non-human characters, who are in turn being performed by people just out of sight of the camera. His performance is both appropriately scary and delightfully outrageous. In one moment, he seems like a fierce pirate before turning it into a flamboyant flourish.

Every line is a meal for Curry, in a performance that does the unthinkable: it manages to upstage the Muppets. Long John Silver, even in this version, is something of a supporting player — as Curry notes in a fourth-wall-breaking moment during his singing spotlight, “This is my only number!” But every moment he’s on screen, Curry makes Long John’s presence known. Most importantly, through Curry’s outsized performance, he accomplishes something not every actor who plays the famed villain can. He makes you believe that Long John really sympathizes for Jim Hawkins enough to sacrifice his own greed, at least for a moment.

But listen, emotion aside, Curry works here because he’s genuinely goofy, managing to never wink at the audience even if he’s acknowledging we’re out there. There are many wonderful Tim Curry performances. This is my favorite one. Happy (late) birthday to a master.