The Muppets

 (Movie Review)

            Like everyone else my age, the Muppets have a lot of nostalgia value for me.  And although this film opened to mixed reviews, I was just curious to see what the Muppets were up to now, for good or bad.

           

            Actually truth be told, I enter into any Muppet movie with low expectations.  Although I have a lot of fond childhood memories of the Muppets, I’ve also been disappointed by them a number of times.  They’ve done some good movies over the years, but they’ve also done a lot of bad movies.

            Even back in their golden age, their original TV show could be very hit or miss.  Some of their best sketches could be wildly imaginative, bizarre, or, delightfully subversive.  But the show could just as easily suddenly swing into saccharine sweet mode, with an over-reliance on sentimentality and clichéd life lessons.  The movies have continued and amplified these flaws.

            This film continues the Muppet tradition.  There are moments of brilliance in this movie, but it also gets sentimental at places, and completely ruins its own momentum.  As a result, parts of the movie can get boring, but the worst thing that can be said about it is that it simply shares the faults of its predecessors. 

            Now that the movie is over, there were enough funny moments that I’m inclined to remember it fondly over all, even if I did get a little bored while I was watching it.

Things I Liked About the Movie

* It’s not the first Muppet movie to engage in meta-humor, but the meta-humor was cute here nonetheless.  The movie engages in countless clichés, like the round-up montage, but at least it has the good grace to make fun of itself while it does this.  And the clichéd plot can almost be forgiven because the characters acknowledge it’s a cliché.  (One of the characters goes as far to point out that his whole speech must be exposition that will later become important in the plot, because otherwise there will be no point in including it in the movie.)

* My favorite parts of the movie were the sketches from the Muppet variety show at the end.  My only complaint was that it was too short.  This was clearly one of the movie’s strengths, so it should have been expanded into more sketches.

Things I Didn’t Like

* Mostly just the excessive sap and sentimentality.

* Arguably the whole concept of centering the plot on a group of outside characters was questionable, and resulted in less time with the usual Muppets. 

            The new Muppet introduced, Walter, is completely bland and entirely forgettable.

            I like Jason Segel a lot in How I Met Your Mother, but unfortunately he’s given very few good lines in this movie.  He mostly just plays the thankless task of playing straight man against the Muppets.  (Although since he wrote the script himself, I suppose he has no-one to blame but himself.)

            But I really hated was the unnecessary, predictable, and sappy sub-plot about the needy girlfriend who gets upset because Jason Segel isn’t paying enough attention to her.  She just seemed to exist to add some unnecessary drama to the script, and I had absolutely nothing invested in their relationship, so I really didn’t care.

And Other Stuff:

Songs

          I know that every children’s movie must contain some musical numbers, but sometimes I wonder whether this is supported by market research, or if this is just flawed conventional wisdom based on what adults think children are supposed to like.

            I remember as a child I would often get very bored or frustrated with a movie whenever there were too many songs that stopped the action.  I liked all the upbeat songs, but my children’s attention span could get very frustrated very quickly by too many slow songs.  (Am I going out on a limb here, or does this resonate with other people?)

            Actually as an adult, I feel much the same way.  I really liked the cheerful upbeat musical number “Life's a Happy Song.” (I even found myself humming it for the next few days at work.)

            But the rest of the songs were just really slow and hard to sit through.

            (But perhaps I am just speaking for myself, because in spite of the fact that I thought the song Am I a Man or a Muppet was really boring and ruined the momentum of the movie, this song was nominated and won all sorts of awards (W)).

The New Muppet

          There was some media buzz about a new Muppet accompanying the release of this movie.  Which begs the question: what has happened to all the other new Muppets over the years?  Remember Clifford from Muppets Tonight (W) or Bean Bunny from The Jim Henson Hour  (W)?

            Since this new Muppet, Walter, doesn’t seem to have any memorable characteristics, my prediction is he will soon be forgotten just like all the other old-new Muppets.  (His only characteristic is an intense desire to join the Muppets, and since he accomplished this at the end of the movie, he no longer has any identifiable characteristics at all.)

            Also, apparently The Jim Henson Hour and Muppets Tonight have also been retroactively erased from continuity, because this movie gives the impression that the Muppets have not been performing since their old 1970s TV show.

The Cameos

          Pointless celebrity cameos have always been a Muppet movie tradition.  And by now it’s a well established tradition, so I suppose there’s no point in debating the merits of it.

            (…Except that it does cause the Muppet movies to age poorly.  This movie in particular featured a lot of cameos from television actors, who traditionally have even less staying power than the silver screen stars.  More likely than not, children 20 years from now are going to have no idea who most of these people are.)

            Mickey Rooney and Alan Arkin were fun cameos (and both men have a history of making pointless cameos in other movies, so it was fitting.)

            Jack Black was really funny in his role, and was the best casting choice.

            And, because I’ve been watching way too much TV lately, I was able to catch actors from Community, Parks and Recreation, and The Big Bang Theory. 

            But other cameos I had no idea who they were.  I had to look it up on Wikipedia to even find out who Selena Gomez and Rico Rodriguez even are. 

            Was this movie dipping the bottom of the barrel for celebrity appearances?

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The Muppets: Movie Review