Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977) on Netflix
Emmet Otter and his Ma get by on laundry and odd jobs. Each secretly enters a Christmas talent contest to buy the other a present, giving up something the other needs.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb8.1/105,729 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Frogtown Hollow, Emmet Otter and his widowed Ma live on what Ma earns doing laundry and what Emmet picks up from odd jobs, and neighbors regularly cheat them out of what they are owed. On a visit to nearby Waterville, mother and son think about Pa, whose snake oil venture never amounted to much. When they hear that a talent contest offers a fifty dollar prize, each decides separately to enter: Ma wants a guitar for Emmet, and Emmet wants a piano for Ma. To get the money and a stage act, both give up something the other relies on, and Emmet joins with Wendell Porcupine, Harvey Beaver and Charlie Muskrat in a jug band. The Riverbottom Gang, among them Chuck Stoat and Fred Lizard, is in the contest too.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jim Henson said Emmet Otter was the first time his team got into elaborate sets with floors in the interiors, taking wide-angle shots of characters coming up through holes in the floor, and he called it their most elaborate production to that point.
- When The Jim Henson Company sold the rights to the Muppets, including Kermit the Frog, to Disney in 2004, Kermit's scenes and narrations were omitted from the special's 2005 DVD.
- A song written for the special's talent show scene, "I Was Born in the Trunk," was performed by the Waterville music store owner and recorded, but never actually used; it turned up on a 2005 Collector's Edition DVD alongside deleted and alternate scenes.
- Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas was one of the first Muppet productions to use radio-controlled puppet effects, designed by Faz Fazakas.
- The special mixed puppetry methods, using the usual Muppet hand puppets but often representing the characters with marionettes, and also employing bunraku and Black Theater techniques.
- In Walt Disney's 2016 film Zootopia, the missing mammal Officer Hopps is tasked with finding from Chief Bogo's priority case file is named Emmet Otterton.
