Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams and Chris Cooper
Directed By: James Bobin
Screenplay By: Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller
Based on Characters Created By: Jim Henson
Produced By: David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Rating: PG
Running Time: 120 minutes
Website: disney.go.com/muppets
Budget: $50 million (estimated)
Genre: Comedy / Family / Musical
Release Date: November 23, 2011
The Muppets’ appeal, ironically enough, has always been their humanity. Jim Henson and his obscenely talented crew didn’t just animate puppets, they imbued felt and foam with emotion and vitality, allowing audiences to fully embrace the delicate illusion being created. They knew that getting the audience to care about the characters was just as important as making the audience laugh – and that it actually made the jokes funnier when they did appear.
For nearly 30 years, the Muppets’ earnest blend of postmodern vaudeville and bittersweet anarchy charmed both young and old on television, in movies and in children’s books and records. But following Henson’s untimely death in 1990, the franchise shuffled aimlessly for more than a decade until being acquired by Disney Studios, who didn’t seem to have any idea how to use them. The characters looked the same, and sounded mostly the same, but the spark was gone.
The spark is back in The Muppets, the group’s first big-screen outing in more than a decade. Championed by longtime Muppet fanatics Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller (who prominently featured singing puppets in their previous collaboration, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), The Muppets celebrates everything great about the Muppets while reestablishing the franchise for a generation that only knows them through a series of uninspired retreads of public domain classics.
The Muppets introduces us to new Muppet Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), who never fit in growing up around humans in Smalltown, U.S.A. His overly-protective brother Gary (Segel) indulges Walter’s Muppet obsession, watching worn-out VHS tapes of “The Muppet Show” with him as nightly ritual. The relationship is taking its toll on Gary’s decade-long courtship of perky schoolteacher Mary (Amy Adams, Enchanted), especially when Gary invites Walter along for the couple’s 10th anniversary trip to Los Angeles so that his brother can realize his dream of visiting Muppet Studios.
Much like the Muppets, the Studios have seen better days, and are about to be sold to millionaire Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, The Town), who plans on destroying them to drill for oil. His iron-clad contract contains a single loophole: the Muppets could buy the studio first, but only if they can raise the $10 million necessary to do so. And so Walter, Gary and Mary set out on a road trip to reunite the Muppets, who have scattered across the globe, and put on one last show to save the theater.
It’s genuinely distressing to see what’s become of some of our favorite characters. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy have separated; she’s gone on to better things as the plus-size editor for French Vogue, while Kermit walks the lonely hallways of his mansion, accompanied only by portraits of his absent friends and a robot butler from the 1980s. Fozzie works with a Muppets cover band in Reno. Gonzo heads a used toilet empire. Sweetums has returned to work at the used car dealership. Sam the Eagle works for a cable news channel. Once assembled, the group must restore the theater, rehearse their acts and work out their differences in just three days, or lose their theater forever
James Bobin, famous for edgy HBO comedies like “Da Ali G Show” and “Flight of the Conchords,” proves an inspired choice for director, hitting all the right comedic and dramatic beats while maintaining a heightened, Broadway show-like tone. Bobin also wisely recruited “Conchords” star Bret McKenzie to collaborate on the film’s excellent musical numbers, which showcase inspired, irony-free wordplay and incredibly catchy music. The opening number, “Life’s a Happy Song,” will be stuck in your head for days, and you will enjoy it.
Throughout the film, the character of Walter serves as something of a surrogate for Segel and Stoller, who suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves working alongside their idols. The writers wisely resist the urge to slavishly rehash classic bits or make references for reference sake, instead creating something new and distinct that taps into the spirit of what has come before. Tapping into the anything-goes spirit of classic Muppet adventures, the film is packed with rapid-fire gags, inside jokes, celebrity cameos and meta-textual references.
Like the best of Henson’s work, The Muppets doesn’t shy away from exploring the depths of its characters’ emotions or the difficulty of maintaining relationships, but it never forgets to entertain the audience while doing so. This is surprisingly well-done family entertainment.
4.5 Stars (out of 5)
