The Muppets (2012)

Well, where to start? I absolutely loved this film. To be honest, it might be my new favourite Muppet film, I’m still debating whether I prefer this one to ‘Muppet Christmas Carol’ or ‘Muppet Treasure Island’, but either way it’s really good.

In this 2011/2 release, we follow Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, his brother Gary (Jason Segel) and his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) as they go to Los Angeles to visit the old Muppet Theatre, where Walter finds that Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) wants to acquire the theatre so he can knock it down and drill for oil. Walter, Gary and Mary decide to seek out the Muppets to try and save the Muppet Theatre. By the way Walter’s a Muppet.

First of all the film has a wonderful story. It manages to show how downhill the Muppets ‘lives’ have become ever since the show and the last major theatrical film, their struggle and their rise back to fame, all the while keeping it family friendly. It was also really interesting to see the Kermit, Walter, Gary and Mary travelling across the country and seeing what the others have done with their lives since leaving the show; Fozzie stars alongside the Moopets (A group of rip off characters), Gonzo and his chicken girlfriend have started a plumbing company (Which Gonzo promptly blows up when Kermit asks him to do the show), Animal was in an anger management programme with Jack Black, and Miss Piggy is a fashion designer in Paris, France. Oh, and Rwolf was sleeping in a hammock.

The soundtrack was really good as well, from the songs to just general background music, including, bizarrely AC/DCs ‘Back in Black’, Starships ‘We Built This City’ and Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Then we also have original songs like the catchy ‘Life’s a Happy Song’, the sad ‘Pictures in my Head’, and the emotional ‘Man or Muppet’. Bret McKenzie, the music supervisor, won an Academy Award for ‘Man or Muppet’, that’s how good the songs were. ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ may have been a bit corny, but to Hell with that, I loved it!

And there are so many references to the old movies and shows as well, Kermit saying “Didn’t you see our (first) movie? We road trip”, the standard ‘rich and famous’ contract from the first film as well, pictures of Kermit with special guests from the television shows (including Jim Henson), the married photo of Kermit and Piggy was taken from ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan’, Sweetums running from the car showroom (Again), heck Kermit and Piggy even perform ‘The Rainbow Connection’ from the first film. It was brilliant, it was truly fantastic for a great Muppet fan like myself.

One of my few problems with the film though is, like ‘Muppets From Space’, there’s too many Muppets, so we don’t really get much interaction with all of them, save the main ones (Kermit, Walter, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, Animal, Bobo the Bear and Uncle Deadly). We do get some interaction with some of the other Muppets, like Pepe, Sam the Eagle, Sweetums, Rowlf, members of the Electric band, Dr. Teeth, and Beauregard (Nice of him to pop up). Hell, Rizzo the Rat didn’t even have ANY lines! There’s a lot wrong with that!

 

Though there is a new Muppet, sort of, in the form of 80s robot who was a great addition to the film. And it’s always great to see Bobo interact with the villain.

Don’t get me wrong though, the Muppets were still fantastic. The human characters were good as well, the interactions they have with the Muppets, the villainy of Richman. The acting was brilliant as well, there was no fault anywhere. And we have the classic cameos, from the beautiful Sarah Silverman, to the brilliant Neil Patrick Harris, the fantastic Alan Arkin, the legendary Dave Grohl, the talented Whoopi Goldberg, to new stars Selena Gomez and Rico Rodriguez.

And of course, the fourth wall jokes have made a triumphant return, with some great liners like Mary’s “This is going to be a short movie”, or Fozzie’s “That was a big explosion! I can’t believe we had that in the budget!”, or referencing the montage. Probably my favourite fourth wall joke was Uncle Deadly complaining that he’s tired of being typecasted as a villain because of his appearance and his “evil English accent”.

Bizarrely though, at the end, the Muppets don’t win. I’ll repeat, the Muppets DON’T win! Richman knocks down the telephone lines so people can’t donate any more money. Then Fozzie hits the counter which makes a decimal point appear. It was a huge gamble, and it surprisingly paid off. Kermit gives the message that they don’t need a theatre or their name, they only need each other, the warmth, love and support that they give each other, nor should they care if no-one else believes in them, as long as they have each other. Kermit then leads the group outside, where they are taken back by the enormous crowd that cheer them. People fill the streets, praising the Muppets and crying out how much they love them. Now that was a truly emotional scene.

I’m going to wrap this up. This film is brilliant, it has a great story, great jokes, it certainly has the magic of the old films, if not surpassing them in every way. A big thank you has to go to Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, you can tell they cared a lot about the Muppet franchise, they wanted to return it to the old spectacular quality, capturing the characteristics and emotions of all our favourite Muppet characters and for not using crappy CGI and using the old techniques, including using robotic puppets at some points. This is truly a spectacular film, if you haven’t seen it, go see it.