Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are both iconic characters and crucial parts of childhood for anyone born in the last 50 years. Less recognisable is Caroll Spinney, the buoyant, rakish man behind both of them – oftenliterally, acting as puppeteer.
I Am Big Bird is an adoring portrait of Spinney, and though the film shows that all of Spinney’s creations are based on facets of his personality, the title suggests which of his creations is closest to his heart.
Largely a dutiful, illustrated-Wikipedia chronicle of this neglected figure in the entertainment industry, it nonetheless provides a number of heartrending moments over its runtime; namely the bond between Spinney and Lisa Ouyang, the child actor he met during the shooting of Big Bird In China, and especially footage of Spinney singing in character as Big Bird at Jim Henson’s funeral. Most fascinating, at least for those unfamiliar with the craft of puppetry, are the physical demands placed upon Spinney under the suit, and the exhausting skill and coordination required to operate such a benign character.
At its best, the film is such an infectious portrait of an (apparently) uncomplicatedly sweet, dedicated and talented artist that it’s easy to forgive how uninspired – and frequently sloppy – it is as a documentary (less easy to forgive is that it features perhaps the most irritatingly cloying music score in a recent documentary). Spinney’s experience during Big Bird’s NASA-sponsored trip into space is ripe with absurdity, but it’s depicted with incongruous earnestness, while an episode involving a murder on Spinney’s estate is too dark for the film to know what to do with, beyond being awkwardly shoehorned in near the end.
Nonetheless, demanding critical distance from a documentary on this particular subject would be churlish – it’s altogether pleasant and good-natured enough that pointing out its evident shortcomings makes you feel like an arsehole.
3/5 stars
I Am Big Bird opens in cinemas on Thursday July 30.
