movie review: The Muppets
Lord knows I'm a big Muppet fan. A browse through my previous blog entries will find two (or maybe three, I can't remember if I made that third one public) reviews of early Muppet movies, and those reviews are simply glowing with praise.
But that's the original incarnation of the Muppets, the one that existed while Jim Henson still sat on the Muppet throne and commanded them with benevolent and wise proclamations. He was assisted in no small part by head writer Jerry Juhl, who stayed on after Henson's death, but no longer had the creative freedom he had under the Henson reign, instead responding to decisions by committee.
I ask, have the Muppets (and here I refer to the "Muppet Show" Muppets, not the "Sesame Street" Muppets who have always seemed to exist in a slightly different reality) really done anything funny, anything worthwhile, since Henson's death? Think before you answer. You may have laughed when the Muppets covered "Bohemian Rhapsody" recently, or when Beaker shows up singing opera in a YouTube video, but are these videos really funny in their own right, or do we laugh only out of pure nostalgia, fondly remembering when the Muppets used to be funny, and responding on a level of recall and recognition, rather than humor? By the very fact that I posed the question, you can probably guess what my answer is.
It has been 13 years since the previous theatrically released Muppet movie, and 20 years since the last good Muppet movie, the last one Henson had a hand in (no pun intended) before his death. Since that death, the Muppets have drifted back and foth between disappointment and outright obscurity. So now that the Muppets are attempting a comeback, it makes sense that the explicit theme behind the plot is the question, "are the Muppets still relevant in today's world?" The movie tries to argue that they are, but its many failings result in a poor argument indeed.
The plot involves three new characters: Schoolteacher Mary (Amy Adams) and her boyfriend Gary (Jason Segel) are intensely happy, nice, and optimistic. They come from such a small town that there is still a milkman who makes deliveries. Gary's brother is Walter, a Muppet. The film, wisely, never tries to explain how a human and a Muppet could be brothers. The story is set in motion when Gary and Mary decide to go to Los Angeles to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Because this is where the Muppet Studio is located, and Walter is obsessed with the Muppets, Gary eagerly agrees to take Walter along with them, despite the fact that this confirms Mary's frustration that Gary's brotherly love always seems to stand in the way of their romance.
Touring the Muppet Studio, the trio find that it is abandoned, forgotten, and falling apart. It is also threatened with foreclosure, as the evil oil baron Tex Richman plans to seize the property and tear it down so that he can drill for oil. Determined to save Muppet Studio, the trio team up with Kermit the Frog to reunite the Muppets -- not just the main characters, but all of the Muppet Show Muppets, even the obscure ones -- to put on a telethon to raise enough money to save the studio from foreclosure.
Okay, so that's the plot, now let's get down to what is right (very little) and wrong (a whole lot) about how all of this is presented to the viewer.
My first big gripe is the couple played by Adams and Segel. These characters are, ostensibly, necessary to set the plot in motion, but once the Muppets decide to reunite, the Muppets themselves rightfully become more central to the story. For the most part, Adams and Segel are reduced to background characters, tagging along with the Muppet gang and reacting as a part of the ensemble, where they stick out like sore thumbs and have absolutely nothing to add. A very few scenes involving their romance are tacked on, perhaps as an after-thought (it certainly felt that way) but these only serve as awkward and unwelcome distractions from the central storyline involving the Muppets. Why even include these characters in the first place? Since Walter is the narrator, his story could have easily been told without the extraneous Gary and Mary characters. Transparently, the only real reason for these characters is because Segel, who co-wrote the film and also plays Gary, simply wanted to write himself into the movie.
The other central human character is Tex Richman, the evil oil baron played by Chris Cooper. Appropriately for a Muppet movie, Cooper plays his villainous role with outright abandon, and I applaud him for providing one of the movie's few -- well, not "bright spots," exactly, but "not as bad" spots. I have strongly ambivalent (now there's an oxymoron for you) feelings about the villain's quirk that he has a tendency to say lines that set up villainous laughter, but instead of laughing, he actually says the words "maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!" He doesn't even laugh these words, he simply sneers them villainously, and it took me a while to realize that this was intended as an inside joke for anyone who knows how to read a movie script; the whole joke is the implication that Cooper himself read the script and repeatedly mistakes the stage direction "maniacal laugh" as a line to be read. Is this funny? No, not even once, but at least it's creative, and on that minor level, I admired the joke.
The musical numbers in The Muppets are almost embarrassing, and fall under three categories: There are a few original songs which, despite a highly undeserved Oscar nomination, are thoroughly forgettable. There are also a few covers of established pop hits, which comes across as a lazy choice. (Did the previous Muppet movies depend on pop covers? No.) And there are also reprises of earlier Muppet favorites like "Rainbow Connection," which do nothing but remind us of the Muppets at their height, and how far they've fallen since.
But it's the humor behind this movie that is the real flaw. Earlier, I observed that the post-Henson Muppets try to get by on nostalgia alone. While that's sad enough when you're talking about a two or three minute YouTube video, we now have an entire 103-minute movie based on this tactic, and it's a gambit that simply doesn't pay off. The Muppets is chock-full of references to The Muppet Show and the earlier Muppet movies, but do the writers ever even try to observe anything funny about these references, or are they just making the references for their own sake? It's the Family Guy theory of humor, which states that making a reference to pop culture is enough to get a laugh, regardless of whether you actually have anything funny to say about it. I know Family Guy is popular with a lot of people, but that type of humor is inarguably lazy and unimaginative, and for me, it has never worked.
Let me provide an example of just how unsuccessful this tactic is: At one point, a TV executive (gamely played by Rashisa Jones) points out to the Muppets that they haven't been popular since the days when Dom DeLouise and Julie Andrews were considered big, cutting-edge guest stars. Now at this point, you may be expecting me to explain the joke, but I'm done. That's the whole joke. A Dom DeLouise reference. My god. Half the audience won't even know who Dom DeLouise is, and the other half will be waiting for a punchline. Do you see what I mean when I say how big a mistake it was to base this entire movie on the question of whether the Muppets are still relevant? Despite the film's intention to argue that they are, the execution of that argument ends up going a long way to prove that they aren't.
So how do I feel about the Muppets? Do I agree with this film's intended message, that they are still relevant and entertaining, or do I agree with the unintended argument made by this film's many failures, which strongly implies that the Muppets are outdated and passe? Let me answer with this observation: I would rather watch a 70s episode of the The Muppet Show for a tenth time than watch this movie or any other post-Henson Muppet production even once. That attitude isn't about living in the past, or being grumpy, closed-minded, or even nostalgic. It's just recognizing the difference between good and bad entertainment.
But that's the original incarnation of the Muppets, the one that existed while Jim Henson still sat on the Muppet throne and commanded them with benevolent and wise proclamations. He was assisted in no small part by head writer Jerry Juhl, who stayed on after Henson's death, but no longer had the creative freedom he had under the Henson reign, instead responding to decisions by committee.
I ask, have the Muppets (and here I refer to the "Muppet Show" Muppets, not the "Sesame Street" Muppets who have always seemed to exist in a slightly different reality) really done anything funny, anything worthwhile, since Henson's death? Think before you answer. You may have laughed when the Muppets covered "Bohemian Rhapsody" recently, or when Beaker shows up singing opera in a YouTube video, but are these videos really funny in their own right, or do we laugh only out of pure nostalgia, fondly remembering when the Muppets used to be funny, and responding on a level of recall and recognition, rather than humor? By the very fact that I posed the question, you can probably guess what my answer is.
It has been 13 years since the previous theatrically released Muppet movie, and 20 years since the last good Muppet movie, the last one Henson had a hand in (no pun intended) before his death. Since that death, the Muppets have drifted back and foth between disappointment and outright obscurity. So now that the Muppets are attempting a comeback, it makes sense that the explicit theme behind the plot is the question, "are the Muppets still relevant in today's world?" The movie tries to argue that they are, but its many failings result in a poor argument indeed.
The plot involves three new characters: Schoolteacher Mary (Amy Adams) and her boyfriend Gary (Jason Segel) are intensely happy, nice, and optimistic. They come from such a small town that there is still a milkman who makes deliveries. Gary's brother is Walter, a Muppet. The film, wisely, never tries to explain how a human and a Muppet could be brothers. The story is set in motion when Gary and Mary decide to go to Los Angeles to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Because this is where the Muppet Studio is located, and Walter is obsessed with the Muppets, Gary eagerly agrees to take Walter along with them, despite the fact that this confirms Mary's frustration that Gary's brotherly love always seems to stand in the way of their romance.
Touring the Muppet Studio, the trio find that it is abandoned, forgotten, and falling apart. It is also threatened with foreclosure, as the evil oil baron Tex Richman plans to seize the property and tear it down so that he can drill for oil. Determined to save Muppet Studio, the trio team up with Kermit the Frog to reunite the Muppets -- not just the main characters, but all of the Muppet Show Muppets, even the obscure ones -- to put on a telethon to raise enough money to save the studio from foreclosure.
Okay, so that's the plot, now let's get down to what is right (very little) and wrong (a whole lot) about how all of this is presented to the viewer.
My first big gripe is the couple played by Adams and Segel. These characters are, ostensibly, necessary to set the plot in motion, but once the Muppets decide to reunite, the Muppets themselves rightfully become more central to the story. For the most part, Adams and Segel are reduced to background characters, tagging along with the Muppet gang and reacting as a part of the ensemble, where they stick out like sore thumbs and have absolutely nothing to add. A very few scenes involving their romance are tacked on, perhaps as an after-thought (it certainly felt that way) but these only serve as awkward and unwelcome distractions from the central storyline involving the Muppets. Why even include these characters in the first place? Since Walter is the narrator, his story could have easily been told without the extraneous Gary and Mary characters. Transparently, the only real reason for these characters is because Segel, who co-wrote the film and also plays Gary, simply wanted to write himself into the movie.
The other central human character is Tex Richman, the evil oil baron played by Chris Cooper. Appropriately for a Muppet movie, Cooper plays his villainous role with outright abandon, and I applaud him for providing one of the movie's few -- well, not "bright spots," exactly, but "not as bad" spots. I have strongly ambivalent (now there's an oxymoron for you) feelings about the villain's quirk that he has a tendency to say lines that set up villainous laughter, but instead of laughing, he actually says the words "maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!" He doesn't even laugh these words, he simply sneers them villainously, and it took me a while to realize that this was intended as an inside joke for anyone who knows how to read a movie script; the whole joke is the implication that Cooper himself read the script and repeatedly mistakes the stage direction "maniacal laugh" as a line to be read. Is this funny? No, not even once, but at least it's creative, and on that minor level, I admired the joke.
The musical numbers in The Muppets are almost embarrassing, and fall under three categories: There are a few original songs which, despite a highly undeserved Oscar nomination, are thoroughly forgettable. There are also a few covers of established pop hits, which comes across as a lazy choice. (Did the previous Muppet movies depend on pop covers? No.) And there are also reprises of earlier Muppet favorites like "Rainbow Connection," which do nothing but remind us of the Muppets at their height, and how far they've fallen since.
But it's the humor behind this movie that is the real flaw. Earlier, I observed that the post-Henson Muppets try to get by on nostalgia alone. While that's sad enough when you're talking about a two or three minute YouTube video, we now have an entire 103-minute movie based on this tactic, and it's a gambit that simply doesn't pay off. The Muppets is chock-full of references to The Muppet Show and the earlier Muppet movies, but do the writers ever even try to observe anything funny about these references, or are they just making the references for their own sake? It's the Family Guy theory of humor, which states that making a reference to pop culture is enough to get a laugh, regardless of whether you actually have anything funny to say about it. I know Family Guy is popular with a lot of people, but that type of humor is inarguably lazy and unimaginative, and for me, it has never worked.
Let me provide an example of just how unsuccessful this tactic is: At one point, a TV executive (gamely played by Rashisa Jones) points out to the Muppets that they haven't been popular since the days when Dom DeLouise and Julie Andrews were considered big, cutting-edge guest stars. Now at this point, you may be expecting me to explain the joke, but I'm done. That's the whole joke. A Dom DeLouise reference. My god. Half the audience won't even know who Dom DeLouise is, and the other half will be waiting for a punchline. Do you see what I mean when I say how big a mistake it was to base this entire movie on the question of whether the Muppets are still relevant? Despite the film's intention to argue that they are, the execution of that argument ends up going a long way to prove that they aren't.
So how do I feel about the Muppets? Do I agree with this film's intended message, that they are still relevant and entertaining, or do I agree with the unintended argument made by this film's many failures, which strongly implies that the Muppets are outdated and passe? Let me answer with this observation: I would rather watch a 70s episode of the The Muppet Show for a tenth time than watch this movie or any other post-Henson Muppet production even once. That attitude isn't about living in the past, or being grumpy, closed-minded, or even nostalgic. It's just recognizing the difference between good and bad entertainment.
posted by Movie Man at
6:01 AM
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