It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie is a 2002 American musical fantasy comedy television film directed by Kirk R. Thatcher and written by Tom Martin and Jim Lewis.

The plot centers on Kermit the Frog who, after losing all hope for saving the Muppet Theatre, is assisted by an angel who shows him a world in which he was never born.

Hours earlier, Kermit prepares a Christmas show with his fellow Muppets with Bobo the Bear playing Santa Claus.

Fozzie confronts a crazed nature-show host (spoofing Steve Irwin), before being dyed green at a Christmas tree lot and mistaken for the Grinch by a gang of angry residents of "Whatville".

Additional Muppet Performers: Alice Dinnean, Geoff Redknap, Denise Cheshire, Drew Massey, Adam Behr and Gord Robertson.

[2] Barbara Schultz of Common Sense Media rated it 4 out of 5, describing it as a "classic story retold in funny, touching Muppet romp.

Sam Eagle, originally performed by Frank Oz, was voiced in the film by Kevin Clash, with John Kennedy handling the on-set puppetry.

Additionally, the movie pays homage to the iconic Muppet song "Rainbow Connection" with a statue of Kermit in a park, dedicated "to the lovers, the dreamers, and you."

The movie was filmed after the September 11 attacks; one scene, set in a version of 2003 where Kermit was never born, shows the Twin Towers visible in the background.

[5] Years after the film's release, this detail gained viral attention, inspiring jokes and tongue-in-cheek fan theories that Kermit the Frog somehow indirectly led to 9/11.