Jim Henson's Turkey Hollow

Overall, this is smart, solid whole-family entertainment, modest in its ambitions yet far above the run of made-for-TV holiday yuck you will be offered in the weeks ahead. And it has puppets.

Although Turkey Hollow’s long journey to the screen has rendered it into run-of-the-mill family fare, it earns a few points for genuine weirdness.

Turkey Hollow clearly trades on the Henson name, given how generic this story is. Nevertheless, it’s in keeping with the spirit of its namesake’s work, and represents a kind of gooey throwback to the days when networks regularly churned out such holiday specials.

Turkey Hollow is spending most of the time laying foundation for a plot that really isn't complicated enough to justify the exposition.

Director Kirk Thatcher is saddled with a fairly dated concept--family in crisis finds salvation off the grid with magical woodland monsters--that might have worked as a one-hour special but feels stretched to fill the film’s two-hour running time.