Not all milestones are created equal

Today I learned that The Muppet Movie is being re-released this (U.S.) summer to celebrate the 45th anniversary of its release.

Come on.

We all know it is patently ridiculous to celebrate X number of years since something occurred if the X does not end in a zero or five.

But if you celebrate all of the anniversaries ending in zero and five, that's too much too. 

The target audience for this celebration, even if it is comprised of adoring fans, will say "Didn't we just do this?"

Forty-five is a perfect example of a terrible anniversary to celebrate. Oh if you are married for 45 years, oh yeah, you should be jumping for joy, if you're still able. Andrew Haigh even made a movie about it. (Wait, I don't think that was the point of that movie.)

But a movie's 45th? Just wait five years and celebrate its 50th.

Especially if you are talking about a re-release, which should really only happen on special anniversaries, because I can tell you it ain't happening every five years. Especially if that film's golden anniversary is just five years off.

I don't recall anyone creating any hoopla over the 40th anniversary of The Muppet Movie five years ago, so maybe this is just an overdue celebration for a movie whose previous anniversaries had been neglected. Still I say, can't you just wait five more years? Are you that desperate for the extra couple million the re-release will bring in?

So let's talk about the movie release anniversaries it is okay to celebrate.

Ten is the first one I would do. When it's five years, that's too soon, and no one has had the time to develop any nostalgia for the different time in their lives when they first saw the film. Because that's a big part of this whole thing, right?

You have to skip 15, especially if you've done ten. That's easy.

Twenty is a tricky one. Two decades is the roughly defined length of a generation, the dividing line between baby boomers and Gen X and millennials. I'm okay with it, with the caveat that you have a really special anniversary only five years off. If you can wait, wait. If you can't, I get it.

Twenty-five. Of course. Quarter century. 

Thirty is also tricky. In fact, from here on out you can make an argument for any anniversary ending in zero. So that'll cover 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. I mean, 50 is such a given that I needn't even devote a separate thought to it because of course you celebrate 50.

Thirty-five is the first one that is just dumb, and 45 is equally dumb. In fact, I say you skip every other five until you get to 75, and then until you get to 125. At some point we will be celebrating the 125th anniversary of the release of certain movies, though no one alive will have seen them when they came out. 

I didn't mention 100, but obviously. 

So 45 is slightly less dumb than 55 but it's slightly more dumb than 35. In any case, it's dumb.

What really is the likely explanation is that someone got the idea to re-release The Muppet Movie like three years ago and someone else said "Okay, but we at least have to wait for its 45th anniversary." Perhaps they deemed the conditions were right, for whatever reason, and waiting those extra three years was already the compromise. Maybe waiting eight years would have lost the window of opportunity, however they defined it.

But it still doesn't mean that I can't grumble about it here on my blog, and now I have.