The Muppets

[jazzfish]

It's no Muppet Movie, but it'll do.

80s Robot was absolutely perfect. Ditto Neil Patrick Harris. Jack Black, being somewhat Muppet-like himself, was acceptable.

The Muppets themselves are... not quite right, in a way that's both more subtle and more jarring than if they were actors fifty years older than their first performances. (Mostly noticeable in Kermit's singing, but bits of voice and characterization are off for many of them.)

Occasionally the self-referential humor felt heavy-handed. "We'll travel by map" worked for me; "This is gonna be a short movie," not so much. I think The Muppet Movie got away with it because it was a film-within-a-film.

Mostly it needed the human characters to not be the main focus. Also more Statler and Waldorf.

Good times. Recommended despite the nigh-Muppetless first twenty minutes.

Comments

[rbandrews]

"There's oil under this studio! I can smell it! More importantly, the geologic survey says it's there."

This is going to become an inside joke at work. By sheer force of will.

[chaobell]

Maniacal laugh.

MANIACAL LAUGH.

Also, the Swedish Chef taking a flamethrower to the fridge full of sentient leftovers was gold.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

I submit that the usage of Jim Parsons as human Walter was utter win.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I feel that it is a solidly middle-of-the-road Muppet movie. Say, three stars out of five. Which makes it well worth watching. I thought Kermit's voice was fine; I didn't like Miss Piggy's voice -- but her characterization was surprisingly good. Not PERFECT, but not bad.

Scenes I really liked: everyone decides to clean up the old theater. Cut to everyone standing around, watching Scooter pushing a broom.

"Wow. This is really boring," before they realize that they're supposed to do this as a musical montage.

The song "Man or Muppet?" Partially, yeah, for Jim Parsons.

"Me Party" didn't work for me -- in trying to straddle the line between perkily best-face and depressingly pathetic, it just ended up entirely on the "depressingly pathetic" side. Which, I suppose, is where it was supposed to end up, but, still. . .

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it a bit more:

I didn't like Amy Adams' character, which is a pity, because I really like Amy Adams. She was the right actor for the role, but it was the wrong role for the movie.

Something that just sort of "clicked" for me, as a way to explain some of how I feel: remember that very first trailer, where they're doing the whole fake-out and making it look like it's a rom-com with Segal and Adams? And then they reveal that it's a Muppet movie?

I remember being a little worried that it was STILL going to have those scenes in it, the ones in the fakeout, and being relieved at the SECOND parody trailer, where they made it clear that they were just filming fake scenes.

And then, those scenes that I had been relieved that they weren't going to be in the movie? Were in the movie.