Anti-racism message...

This movie, the very first film I ever saw in a theater at the tender age of four going on five, is up on 18 parts on YouTube and I watched it for the first time in about twenty years yesterday and something dawned on me about it that I couldn't have picked up on at the time.

Miss Finch and the Dodos (all of whom were very creepy looking) were obsessed with the notion that Big Bird should "stick to his own kind" instead of the multi-cultural people and creatures on Sesame Street he'd known for years because they didn't think he could be loved as much by non-birds, of which of course they were wrong.

Sesame Street's live population was multi-cultural, African-Americans, Latinos, whites, etc., etc., etc. Even their Muppets were all different and they all got along well and loved each other, so even though I understood that much as a lad, I couldn't have picked up on the fact at the time that this movie was an allegory against racism, and one that obviously works well as even at twenty-seven, I still got a smile on my face at the end when Big Bird was reunited with his friends on Sesame Street.

Jim Henson and his workers should be commended for that. And they'd better do Henson justice in his forthcoming biopic or they're gonna make a lot of people very angry.