When Love is Gone

12/27/2013

My family always watches The Muppet Christmas Carol before Christmas. This morning we're watching it again, and I have to mention the one thing that bugs me when it's on TV. The song "When Love is Gone" is cut out every time. That annoys me to no end. Ooh, that scene is about to start right now...aaaand it's over. I've read that it wasn't shown in theaters either, but that's no excuse. Without it, the scene is too short. Scrooge says he loves Belle. She says he did once and walks away. Everyone is in tears, but it seems unearned and it was odd to me when I was young. Then I saw the full version at some point and can't see why it wasn't worthy of inclusion. The song gives emotion and build up to the breakup, Scrooge breaking down before the end. The song also mirrors the one in the closing scene, "When Love is Found." It has opposing lyrics set to the same melody. Here a sad memory gives way to happy, new beginnings; an old man singing to a ghost and crying alone turns into that man having a wealth of friends. It never made sense to me to remove it since it was so tied into the fabric of the narrative in that way.

I used to watch only the version with that song in it every year. Now that we've been DVRing it since we no longer have a working VCR in the living room to watch that old tape, we haven't heard that song for a few years now. (Keeping the tape, though. I have a VCR in my bedroom and can't throw it away.) We continually forget to replace the movie, though I swear I remember buying it. And as I was wondering this out loud, I discovered that we got the Blu-ray for Christmas. I hope it plays in its entirety or that it's in deleted scenes.

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