It’s been 12 years since we’ve last seen the Muppets on the big screen. It’s crazy to think about. To me, the Muppets are as big of an American institution as Saturday Night Live (in both good times and bad times). There should be a new Muppets movie every three years, just to re-indoctrinate the youngs ones! Some people may not be big Muppet fans, but can you find anyone who really doesn’t like them?
If so, congratulations, you’ve found a Nazi (and I’ve officially Godwin’d this review).
That’s why it pleases me to say that The Muppets is surprisingly good, even going in with high expectations.
As The Muppets opens, Gary, played by Muppets super-fan Jason Segel, sets out for Hollywood with his brother Walter — who’s a Muppet but kind of doesn’t know it — and his girlfriend, Mary, played by the surprisingly Muppet-like Amy Adams. Notice a meta-pattern here? Walter idolizes the Muppets and is dying to tour their theater, but when he gets there, it’s deserted. The group has broken up, and the place, along with the right to use the Muppet name, is about to fall to a nasty oil baron named Tex Richman, who’s played by an energetically wicked Chris Cooper.
The plot, such as it is, requires that Gary, Mary and Walter round up the Muppets and put on a show to save the theater and the Muppet legacy, while evading the evil oil magnate. There’s not much to it, but then there’s not much to The Muppet Movie, either: It’s about rounding up the Muppets to go to Hollywood and put on a show to create the Muppet legacy, while evading an evil frog-leg magnate.
This movie is different from the other Muppet movies you’ve seen and grown to love. One thing that makes the Muppets great is their ability to appeal to just about every age group with their comedy. They’re notorious for making jokes that will make kids laugh and grown-ups chuckle and their sometimes dirty innuendos. This is lacking in the movie though, and it is practically a children’s movie that has few jokes that make older audiences laugh. The laughs you get as an adult though are because of nostalgic purposes, and not the clever writing of their movies before.
Rather than being a Muppets movie, this is more of a celebration of the Muppets. One thing the movie does great is that it doesn’t shy away from the fact that it’s been 12 years since we’ve seen the Muppets. It fully embraces it, and it serves as a launching point to re-energize this franchise. This truly is a love letter to Kermit and friends from Jason Segel.
The Muppets are one of the few remaining cultural creations about which even cynical people rarely express cynicism, about which a deeply irony-infatuated popular culture rarely adopts any battle cry but a Kermit-like “Yaaaaay!” To touch them is to lay yourself bare even more than Segel did in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Get it wrong, and you will not be forgiven. He’s lucky he got it just about perfectly right.
I think you’re too critical. The movie introduced the Muppets to a new generation while giving the older ones more than enough fodder to enjoy the ride. Further, I think most of the jokes were tailored to adults because they were so rapid-fire.
And admit it, the fart shoes were pretty funny.
Saying something is “just about perfectly right” is too critical?
Only in the way it sounds like something a critic would say.
You said Jason Segel got it just about perfectly right, not really the movie itself. I was referring to the parts where you said there wasn’t much plot and the writing wasn’t as clever.