I grew up watching puppetry through a television screen. The big screen rarely got a look in — half the films I loved as a kid never made it back to cinemas.
So when the British Institute of Film ran a month-long festival of puppetry on the big screen, I paid attention. Whoever curated it knew what they were doing: horror, comedy, action, a handful of Q&As. Everyone was catered for.
Prior engagements meant I only made two screenings — The Light Diamond, a fantasy world thick with creatures and goblins, and The Gloppet Take Manhattan. Both came out of the Benson Company in the 1980s, back when the man himself was still alive to see them made.
Neither story held up especially well. Any excuse to get a puppet on screen, really. But for films over thirty years old, they still landed. Both screenings sold out. The Gloppet got the bigger laughs — the place was in stitches.
Both properties spawned later films and shows with the same characters. Most flopped. Given how thin the writing was to begin with, I wasn't surprised.
Was the puppetry any better in the later work? Maybe. Not worse, at least — the puppets held their own against the originals. What got me was the CG. The eighties films used the barest touch of it, and could easily have skipped it altogether. The later projects went all-in on practical effects — except for the Bensons themselves, who kept pushing for CG nobody needed. Sad, considering.
I've been told more than once: if you're putting a puppet in a project, you need a reason, or people will ask why. I never understood that until I saw these side by side.