A new Muppet feature film is nigh (Muppets Most Wanted hits theaters on Friday), and people the world over are brushing up on their Muppet lore in preparation. They may be discovering that Muppet Treasure Island is great, or reminding themselves that The Great Muppet Caper is not that great. But one thing is for certain: people of all ages are likely using this week to once again get their groove on to Jim Henson’s and James Frawley’s beloved childhood classic The Muppet Movie. The sweet, friendly, good-natured, pure-hearted debut big-screen outing for the beloved Muppets has been a standby for literally generations. It’s not just funny and sweet, but also inspiring and often tear-jerking. There is something so pure and innocent and wacky and fun about The Muppet Movie that everyone I know, without exception, is deeply in love with it.
Which means its time for CraveOnline‘s Trolling to track its big, fat, muddy boots all over it. Over here, it’s our gleefully evil job to tip sacred cows, and few cows (frogs?) seem to be more sacred than The Muppet Movie. So let’s just say it: The movie is overrated. The Muppet Movie is well-remembered, but how does it stand up as a film? Could it actually collapse under the smallest bit of critical scrutiny? Could it be that The Muppet Movie SUCKS? Let’s take a look.
The film is still sweet, and it can’t be denied that “The Rainbow Connection” is a beautiful song; I still get choked up almost every single time I hear it. But how much of the universal affection for The Muppet Movie stems from nostalgia, and how much stems from its actual quality as a feature film? The feature film is, at the end of the day, a pretty slapdash affair that today feels a bit cheap and corny. And let’s face it: The real thrill of seeing The Muppet Movie is the simple sight of seeing puppets outdoors. That’s pretty much it.
Have I crossed the line yet?
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
The Muppet Movie SUCKS!
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It Meanders
The Muppet Movie is staged as a road movie, featuring Kermit the Frog trying to go to Hollywood with dreams of breaking into the movies. Well and good, I suppose. Road movies are a movie tradition. And while Kermit is being kind of half-assedly pursued throughout limited portions of the movie, there's no sense of forward momentum. There's no time limit, so Kermit can take as long as he needs. There are no stakes if he fails; he'll simply not be a movie star and go back to his life in the swamp, which seemed pretty idyllic. Indeed, why break into movies at all? Doesn't it seem to you that the kind-hearted Kermit shouldn't be swayed by a random passing exec? Kermit's pursuit is driven by his ego, which is something he didn't previously have. That was Miss Piggy's department.
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The Frog Leg Plot Is Dumb
The villain of the piece – if you can call him that – is Doc Hopper, played by Charles Durning. Doc Hopper wants to kidnap Kermit and force him to be a mascot for his chain of fast food restaurants that specializes in fried frog legs. First of all, that's stupid. Frog legs are funny maybe if you're 4 years old. Secondly, Doc Hopper seems to dip in and out of the movie as the plot warrants, and the ultimate climax of the film – if you can call it that – feels limp as a result. He's not a villain so much as a minor inconvenience. He's not scary, not funny, and doesn't have much to do with the plot. Doc Hopper, then, is pretty much dispensable.
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The Variety Show Energy Is Gone
“The Muppet Show” was manic and entertaining largely because it was staged as a variety show. It allowed for shifting genres, wonderfully random musical numbers, and a large dose of the unexpected. Since this is a movie, the filmmakers felt the need to – sigh – wrap that premise around a traditional three-act structure (with mixed results). Now we have to focus on a central main character rather than a rotating bevvy of wacky and unexpected characters. As such, the energy is lower and the humor is muted. We get less of a sense of who these characters are because they're trapped in a story.
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Lame Puns
“Gone with the Schwinn” is not funny. “Fork in the road” is not funny. Reusing the “Myth! Myth!” joke is a terrible idea. Puns are pretty universally lame, and I'm pretty sure they're illegal in some countries.
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Kermit and Piggy?
This is something I've always wondered about the Muppet universe. Why is Miss Piggy attracted to Kermit and (sometimes) vice versa? Kermit is calm. Zen. Unambitious. Rarely angry. He seems perfectly content singling “The Rainbow Connection” in the woods. Why would he date a bustling, vain, self-obsessed city-dwelling monster like Miss Piggy? And why would Piggy be interested in a soft-spoken country bumpkin? They say opposites attract, but in this scenario, I don't buy it.
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How “True” Is It?
So when watching The Muppet Movie, are we watching the actual story of The Muppets? Are we watching a movie within a movie, as the prologue suggests, or is this a “true” story? Was the Muppet origin actually like this? In short: Is this film canonical or fictional? Since this is staged as the movie that the Muppets made about themselves, one can glean that this is not “true.” Indeed, looking back over the Muppet movies, the only ones that seem to be within “reality” are Muppets from Space, The Muppets, and Muppets Most Wanted. Even the original doesn't deal with the Muppet story. This doesn't necessarily make The Muppet Movie bad, but it does undercut its honesty.
