Monday, January 2, 2012

The Muppets (2011) Review



By Jason Haskins

The Muppets are a group of puppets Jim Henson popularized in the seventies, with characters like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. The Muppets starred in a string of movies as well as The Muppet Show. After some definitely bad movies of recent years the brand needed fresh blood, but it was a huge surprise when Forgetting Sarah Marshall star Jason Segal approached Disney with a concept to revitalize the Muppets hitting theatres late this year.

There’s no question this movie is good, but I don’t think it’s one of my favorite movies of the year. Segal stars as Gary, a human who has a Muppet brother named Walter, who’s trying to find a place in the world. Along with Gary and his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), they stop by the now-defunct Muppet Studios in Hollywood only to learn that it’s in disrepair with a skeezy oil man (Chris Cooper) trying to buy the lot in order to drill for the oil underneath and demolish the history. The gang must track down Kermit and try to get the Muppets back together for one last show in order to raise the $10 million it’s going to take to save the lot.

The story is filled with a lot of references and meta-cinematic pauses that show how marketable and fun the Muppets are and it was clearly made by fans of the original series. The humor is very funny—not necessarily gut laughs, but a large amount of insanely cute and nostalgic humor that made me think of how much I enjoyed the Muppets as a child. The biggest problem with the script is how simplistic it is—overly simplistic in a way that anyone could have written this because of how unabashedly predictable and easy it all is. But I guess that’s the naivety of the franchise and why it all works so well.

Bret McKenzie of the Flight of the Conchords band supervised all of the music and did a bang up job. There are great musical numbers that are actually quite well done and catchy in their own right. They all have that great Flight of the Conchords flair to them too, making them intrinsically funny and clever as well. The performances are all quite great with Jason Segal rising above the rest of the cast with his overly enthusiastic personality that comes through his character constantly. He looked like he was having the most fun for sure. A lot of cameos can be spotted throughout the movie as well, which were fun to look out for—particularly a large plot device involving Jack Black that’s pretty funny.

All in all, this is a fun time at the movies for families. I don’t think it’s my favorite Muppet movie, but it definitely gave me high hopes for the franchise in the future. This is the correct way to deal with these characters because the movie isn’t dumb, it’s just the way Jim Henson did them. I don’t think it’s a very memorable movie because of the lack of depth or originality to the story or screenplay, but it did make me laugh and it was a great distraction that filled me to the gills with memories of my past experiences with these characters.

4 out of 5 stars

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