The Muppets | Review
It’s been twelve years since the last major “Muppets” movie, and there hasn’t been a demand for their return either. However, their new film, simply titled ‘The Muppets’, is a thoroughly delightful and enjoyable film that’ll entertain both children and adults alike. With their return, The Muppets are able to entertain their old fans as well as welcome in the newer ones!
Jason Segal (‘I Love You, Man’) stars as Gary, one of the few important human characters in the film. His brother is Walter, who no one finds odd is a puppet. Gary’s girlfriend of ten years is Mary (Amy Adams), another important human character.
‘The Muppets’ isn’t really big on plot as it is on self-referencial and self-aware humor, and musical sequences. The film’s simple story involves Walter’s love of The Muppets, and him finding out that a rich businessman, Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), is planning to buy the Muppet Theater in order to destroy it and drill for the oil underneath. Unless Walter can reunite the old Muppet gang and raise $10 million, Richman will succeed in his plan.
The majority of the film consists of Gary, Walter, and Mary embarking on a road trip across the country and rounding up the old Muppet gang. Having never been a fan of The Muppets, it was surprisingly fun seeing Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal, and the other dozen puppet characters interacting with one another, as well as with the human characters. At times the film deals with Gary and Mary’s relationship problems in order to include a human conflict, though this is usually an unnecessary distraction from the main story.
The songs and musical sequences in ‘The Muppets’ are, for the most part, very fun and catchy. The opening number, “Life’s a Happy Song,” and the closing “Mahna Mahna” are simply irresistible and will definitely take a while to get out of your head.
With the majority of the film’s humor relying on self-awareness, the result is a mixed feeling. The jokes are mostly funny, as the Muppet characters’ dialogue consist of “Did we just point out a major plot point? I hope we did because otherwise it would have been for no reason,” and other jokes like “traveling by map.” The film’s use of this type of humor is funny, but sometimes they can be too excessive, which leads to a feeling of laziness on the script’s part.
The innocent fun of ‘The Muppets’ more than makes up for this small issue, however. By the time the characters do their big show to raise money, all worries immediately disappear. The opening act remind us of joyous nature of the Muppets, and by the time we get to a chicken cover of Cee-Lo Green’s “Forget You,” you can’t help but just smile and enjoy the show – both the film and show within the film.
‘The Muppets’ quite possibly wouldn’t have happened without the encouragement and efforts of Jason Segal, who also co-wrote the screenplay. The film features many, many celebrity cameos, such as the likes of: Jack Black, Rashida Jones, Donald Glover, Alan Arkin, Zach Galifianakis, Emily Blunt, James Carville, Feist, Whoopi Goldberg, Selena Gomez, John Krasinski, Neil Patrick Harris, Feist, Jim Parsons, Rico Rodriguez, Sarah Silverman, Ken Jeong, and Kristen Schaal. The inclusions of such a wide array of celebrity cameos is sure to be a fun treat for viewers. This is a fairly light-hearted family film that reignites the flames of The Muppets. This may not be “The Greatest Muppet Movie of All Time” like it was first entitled, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun, and hopefully there will be future Muppet films that are just as enjoyable and successful as this.
