I’m probably the wrong person to review The Muppets. I’m incredibly biased, being a huge fan of Jim Henson’s creations since my childhood (so much so that I’ve been asked to contribute a short piece on his cultural impact to an upcoming scholarly collection). But that doesn’t mean I blindly adore everything Kermit the Frog and company have done over the Muppets’ nearly sixty-year existence. After the classic run of The Muppet Show (1976-1981), which aired before I was born but was played constantly in reruns in my youth; the great third Muppet movie The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984); and the end of the fondly remembered Muppet Babies cartoon series (1984-1991), there have been very few moments of Muppets excellence after the death of creator Jim Henson in 1990. While the two subsequent post-Henson films had some great moments – 1992’s A Muppet Christmas Carol and 1997’s Muppet Treasure Island – the following movie (and most recent until this year’s The Muppets), 1999’s Muppets from Space was pretty awful, and the later three Muppet television movies, It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz (2005), and A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008) had only flashes of greatness but were largely disappointing.
Part of the problem of inconsistency is likely due to the fact that the ownership of The Muppets had been in disarray for more than twenty years after Henson’s death. Henson, who grew tired of the business end of the Muppets, attempted to sell the rights to the Muppets to Disney but died the week he was supposed to sign the final contracts. Henson’s family maintained ownership of the Muppets (often collaborating with Disney on projects like The Muppet Christmas Carol) until 2000, when the Henson family sold the Muppet rights to the German media company EM.TV – which proceeded to do next to nothing with them. The Henson family repurchased the rights in 2003, only to finally sell the rights to the Muppets to Disney in 2004, like Jim Henson had intended over twenty years earlier. Disney and its second-to-none marketing machine has used all of its resources – including a genius marketing campaign – to return the Muppets to pop culture prominence.
So it’s understandable that the filmmakers – writers Jason Segal (who also stars) and Nicholas Stoller and director James Bobin (The Flight of the Conchords) – have taken the storyline approach in the movie that the world has forgotten about the Muppets. Despite the fact that Disney has kept the Muppets in the public eye with guest appearances on various television shows (like, inexplicably, WWE Raw) and in a series of hilarious YouTube clips, it’s been 12 years since the last Muppets theatrically released movie and thirteen years since the last Muppets TV series (discounting Sesame Street, which Muppet characters are owned separately). An entire generation of children have grown up without regular Muppet programming, meaning that it’s entirely accurate to say that The Muppets has the difficult task of not only appeasing old fans (likely my age and older) and appealing to new ones (kids ten and younger).
Thankfully the latter isn’t difficult. Despite nearly all of the original Muppet performers having passed away or retired (Dave Goelz, whose primary character is Gonzo, is the lone original performer of what you’d probably call the “core Muppets”), the unique Muppet brand of humor remains intact. There’s absurdity, insanity, mayhem, explosions, and chickens, so don’t let the frequently derided “fart shoes” Fozzie joke in the trailer mislead you as an attempt to reinvent Muppet humor (the bit is actually played off as a lame idea, something that unfortunately isn’t shown in the trailer). I was surrounded by dozens of kids in the screening who laughed at every joke, which makes it clear that the Muppet humor that has won audiences over in 1970s and 1980s is still very much universal.
The story, for what it’s worth, involves Gary (Jason Segal) and Walter (a new Muppet) as two brothers who are the world’s biggest Muppet fans. The two take a trip from their home in Smalltown, USA accompanied by Gary’s girlfriend Mary (an adorable, as usual, Amy Adams) to not only celebrate Gary and Mary’s ten years of dating but to visit the Muppet Studio. But not only is the Muppet Studio in disrepair from years of misuse, Walter discovers that oil baron Tex Richman (a scenery-chewing Chris Cooper) is planning to buy the property, raze it, and drill for oil. It’s up to Gary, Walter, and Mary to find Kermit in time to reunite the Muppet gang for a telethon to save the studio. Unfortunately, the Muppets haven’t performed together for several years and the Muppets are rusty at best – and some relationships, particularly the one between Kermit and Miss Piggy, have become strained over the years.
The rest of the film plays out much like an updated version of the original Muppet Movie, with so many similarities that it would be easy to dismiss the film as a sneaky remake. But despite similar plots the themes of the film are totally different – while The Muppet Movie was about building something new, The Muppets is about fixing something that has broken. And that’s why you should ignore the movie’s PG rating: The Muppets is the rare family film that is probably more moving for adults than it is for children. While audience members of all ages will laugh at the antics of Gonzo and the Swedish Chef, the scenes involving Kermit and his friends realizing that their paths have drifted apart and into different roads of life will evoke similar feelings from adults in the audience who have likely had to have done the same with various friends and places in their lifetimes. The self-doubt that plagues Kermit into whether he even still has it in him anymore shows more emotional complexity than you would expect from a character made out of green felt. It surprisingly reminded me of The Wrestler, which I wouldn’t have expected at all going into the movie but makes perfect sense now: the common theme of showbiz has-beens trying to put the broken pieces together for one more run at the top.
This film doesn’t just present a new Muppets adventure, it celebrates the nearly sixty years of Muppet history by proving that Kermit and his friends are as funny in 2011 as they were in 1976. Though Segal and Adams definitely nab more screentime than most human actors in Muppet films, their enthusiasm for starring in a film with the Muppets is obvious and they are wise to take a backseat to the real stars. The same goes for the dozens of actors in cameo roles (although the scene with Danny Trejo from one of the trailers was curiously absent, suggesting there’s quite a bit left on the cutting room floor). In fact, a large portion of the rumored cameos were not in the final film which, honestly, is just as well – it is, after all, titled The Muppets, not Cameos From Hollywood Stars Who Like The Muppets. Everyone involved conveys so much joy at being in a Muppet movie, and Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords) has composed a set of songs for the film that are so perfect for the Muppets – particularly the opening number, Life’s a Happy Song, sung by Segal and Walter – that I would be surprised if we don’t see a Muppet performance of at least one of them at next year’s Academy Awards as a Best Original Song nomination.
There’s very little not to love in The Muppets, and, for the first time since Henson’s death, I honestly felt that the ingenuity that he had created decades ago was 100% back on screen. The movie is touching, full of surprises, and, most important of all, funny. I can’t stress this enough – if the Muppets ever made you smile in your life, you will love this movie.
Rating: A totally biased 10/10. Go see it and be prepared to smile for the rest of the day!
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