Nov. 23, 2011 - Issue #840: Battle the world

The Muppets

It's time to meet the Muppets, again!

As a pretty unabashed fan of the Muppets, it kind of pains me to consider this, but it's at least a little bit strange that the usual reaction to Hollywood's mining of the increasingly rich '80s children's nostalgia vein—Transformers, The Chipmunks, Tron, Battleship, etc—just completely went out the window when the first tastes of the newest Muppet movie hit our cultural palette. The snide derisiveness, the upturned noses at another cynical, memory-fuelled cash grab, the allusions to forcible sex acts committed on our younger selves—there was none of that. Just pure, unbridled joy that finally, finally, we'd get to relive some of the most unsullied, open-heartedly enthralling moments of our youth.

Of course, that's probably been the appeal of the Muppets from even their first day (and, I mean, for the love of God: they're not Battleship). Ostensibly for children, the Muppets are the kind of infinitely clever children's entertainment that leaps across demographics with ease, not with a knowing wink or sharp aside, but by pulling you into their google-eyed excitement for the world: slightly-faded celebrities, hackneyed Catskills gag acts, Keith Moon homages, all of them kind of come together in pure, puppeted glory, to give you that rush of naïve wonder that can cause even the most hardened of us to melt as soon as we feel it. The difference between the Muppets and those other ploys is that they, at best, can only remind you what it was like to be a child that was experiencing them; the Muppets remind you of what it's like to be a child, full stop.
 

That said, The Muppets, Jason Segel's update, is an unabashedly nostalgic experience, and not just because it apes the general story, and some very specific moments, from their first cinematic experience. Rather than putting the gang together, they're trying to get it back together, but they're still battling a wealthy capitalist with untoward designs: in this case, it's Tex Richman, a mirthless—he literally has to say "maniacal laugh"—oil baron who aims to raze their old theatre and scoop up the oil underneath it if the Muppets can't raise the $10 million required to get control back.
The hijinx related here tend to either be of the classic Muppet—all these characters are just as you remember them—or of the starry-eyed fan variety, in the form of star Jason Segel and his Muppet brother Walter, a pair of long-time fans who help the group out. It's a smart little device—almost literally putting the viewer on screen—that has more than a couple great gags, most notably a hilarious duet where each tries to figure out if they're a man or a Muppet. It's also a kind of double-dip into the warm feelings the Muppets engender, which is maybe a bit too much: one of the great joys of the numerous spoof trailers, for instance, was seeing the characters we know and love bring their brand of wacky to something new and different. The Muppets is sure to overload the pleasure centres of your brain connected to old memories, but it doesn't really stretch its felted hand elsewhere. Maybe they'll do that next time—these things always get sequels, after all. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus