Obscure Movie Review of the Day: Before there was Elmo In Grouchland, there was Follow That Bird, the Children's Television Workshop's first attempt at a feature film.

I like Carroll Spinney, the guy who has probably sacrificed his own spine putting that bird suit on day after day, year after year. And there's some great cameos, typical of Muppet movies. Chevy Chase, George Lucas, John Candy. Good ol' Boy Waylon Jennings even does a song.

The movie was made in 1985, the same year Marty McFly went back to the fifties to get hit on by his mom, and in a sense this movie also attempts to go back and recapture a bit of innocence that even then was disappearing from the screen.

Does it work? I don't know. My kids were bored with it, and frankly, so was I. But I have to wonder whether that says more about us than it does about the movie.

I will say this though--it's obvious that the budget was minimal, despite the big-screen format. They didn't even do thunder when the Count would finish counting, for crying out loud. And a couple of times, that would have been really, really funny.

In fact, that's what I thought they were doing at one point. While Big Bird is locked in a cage, they try to free him without waking the guys who took him captive. There's a huge ring full of keys they're trying, and as they try each one, Count would count it. I thought they were adding a level of tension--if Count finished counting before the key worked, lighting would sound and the bad guys would wake up--but they did get to the last key, and no lightning. Say what?

One thing it did make me miss, though, is Jim Henson. The Bert and Ernie banter is what it used to be--nearly antagonistic, rather than sappy and palling around, like its become since Henson's death. The Frank Oz/Jim Henson dynamic was incredible, and responsible for the success of the Bert and Ernie/Kermit and Piggy/Kermit and Fozzie team ups. The differences in the characters created the conflict that underscored the humor--now, as if in posthumous tribute to Henson, the characters all treat each other with such love and respect it falls flat. Sparks come from friction, not from sappy sugar.

While I'm on the subject of CTW movies, you know what would have been really cool? A Bloodhound Gang movie. Like from 3-2-1 Contact. I wonder who has the rights to it now. I can just see the teenagers doing Matrixesque wire-fu with a rocked-up version of "If you've got the crime, they got the time . . ." bumping the theatre. And the end will be all of them standing around going "You can't fool us, Mr. Roberman! That rock's not from the sun! The sun's made of GAS!"