Muppets
BlogalongaMuppets: Men Or Muppets?
My idea was frankly a well-trodden route:
I’d stolen the concept from blogger The Suit.
They call him Incredible, blogger on Odd Job,
And once when I met him I bought him a Hob Nob.
His Muppet opinions were channeled through Beaker,
And I’ve had considered that Muppet much meeker
But then his opinions were given quite freely,
With wall to wall swearing and barely a “mee-mee.”
My next was a Movie-Con Forumite chum,
But watching the Muppets has oft made him glum.
On Twitter he goes by the name EthanRunt,
But most who have met him think he’s just a lovely fellow actually. (Ahem.)
His posts showed a talent for cool Photoshopping
(I wish I was that good at pasting and cropping.)
He even made up his own Muppet, a snail:
It’s just such a shame that most films made him wail.
Then came Tim Brandon, from blog Mild Concern,
Another who thought from the Muppets he’d learn,
And learn he did quickly, that he liked their songs,
But Michael Caine’s dancing is all kinds of wrongs.
Book-ending his journey were films he’d not seen,
The first Muppet movie, on which he weren’t keen,
And also the last one, which prompted a quiz o-
ver where was his favourite – the rat they call Rizzo?
Then at the last mo came Joe Cunningham – freak!
He rattled the lot off in under a week!
(Making me look bad – forever my headline
Is I’ve missed another Blogalongabond deadline.)
The Razzmatazz gave on each film a top five,
Even on Muppets From Space – that’s a jive
Turkey of epic proportions – I mean it!
(At least he could claim that he’d sat down and seen it.)
The one thing that couldn’t by any be doubted
Is that thorough opinions on Muppets we’d outed,
All giving opinions on each Muppet opus
As a method of allowing each one to cope as
The wait for the new film stretched longer and longer –
And then the Yanks saw it! In November! That’s wronger
Than even the worst of the series. But surely
I’d not know for certain which film ranked most poorly?
Well ha! I exclaim! Au contraire! I can prove
Which movies left most of us feeling the groove,
Which sent us to hell, and which lifted to heaven,
For all of the bloggers have ranked out of seven
Each Muppety saga, and as you can see
On which is the best, all but I can agree.
I love Christmas Carol, but some Muppets it missed;
But the final result leaves me happy, not pissed.
So now it’s all over, until there’s a sequel
Which, rumour would have it, might lose Jason Segel.
But for now, our adventures have reached a conclusion
And Muppets and blogging are no longer a fusion
That I hope has been all things, at least celebrational;
I’ve certainly no doubt it’s been Muppetational.
But even if Muppets have made you go “blech!”
Then just wait for the sequel – when bloggers will Trek…
Coming later this year: BlogalongaTrek. Starting in June, with Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, I’ll be reviewing a Star Trek film a month until the release of the twelfth in the series, next May. Given that only five of the eleven so far have been any good, and two of them are quite, quite awful, it’s sure to be an epic journey through pleasure and pain; even more so for me, as I only own the first seven on VHS. They are the last remaining videotapes I own. Join me, either by contributing here or by your own blogs, for the journey where quite a lot of people have gone before. Blogalong V: BlogalongaTrek, starting June this year.
But thanks again to all of my excellent bloggers, it’s been a fascinating journey, where we mainly learned that nostalgia isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be – unless you make a film about it. And that no-one thought Muppets From Space was any good.
Twinklytoes Review: The Muppets
The Movie Evangelist proudly welcomes its first disciple, Twinklytoes, who will be contributing reviews to give a second opinion to counter mine. We’ll either be the new Siskel and Ebert or the new Cannon and Ball, but hopefully you’ll enjoy reading someone’s opinions other than mine. First up, her review of The Muppets: it’s a different take than the one I offered, to say the least…
Well I can safely say that watching The Muppets is an experience that I shall not repeat in a hurry. The only thing unpredictable about it was the level of stupidity they achieved and the highlight was the end credits. Although even those were blighted with intolerable singing. Right from the off it was apparent that this movie could win an award for being even more irritating than High School Musical. If you haven’t seen the horror that is HSM – trust me, that’s a hard award to win.
I’m not sure what it was that irritated me so much about The Muppets movie. Maybe it was the cheesy grins, pathetic songs, terrible 60’s dance moves, obvious predictability or the fact that I wasted good money on seeing it? Who knows. What I don’t understand is how, in the name of all that is good and holy I appear to be the only one to despise this movie. The world appears to have turned into place populated by lovers of wailing puppets and cheesy, predictable story lines.
At the end of the movie (that didn’t come a moment too soon) the ‘baddie’ said ‘Stop singing!’ I have never agreed with someone so much in my life. So if you are planning on going to see this spectacular display of stupidity -take my advice. Get that hard earned cash and just throw it down the toilet, it would be much better spent that way.
BlogalongaMuppets: The Muppet Christmas Carol – A Great Muppet Movie?
My Muppet journey has finally arrived at Christmas. For a supposedly joyful season, Christmas can be a dark time: from It’s A Wonderful Life (a film about a man who attempts suicide, then goes a bit mad) to Bad Santa (where the nicest character is a thieving drunk who vomits in front of children), but for the Muppets it was an attempt to put behind them some real life dark times. Since The Muppets Took Manhatten Then Realised They Had No Idea What To Do With It, both Jim Henson (Kermit / Rowlf / Dr. Teeth / Swedish Chef) and Richard Hunt (Scooter / Statler / Janice / Beaker) had passed away, at a combined age of less than 100. So for their first visit to the big screen in eight years, it seemed fitting that the Muppet movies should undergo something of a reinvention.
So gone were the modern day settings, the self-referential knowingness and a lot of the Muppets that we know and love. (Wait, what?) Yes, call it controversial, but while The Muppets Christmas Carol has come to be regarded as a classic Christmas movie, it isn’t actually a classic Muppet movie. Part of this is the sidelining of so many of the main characters of the core Muppets ensemble: with the loss of Henson and Hunt, the likes of Rowlf and Scooter are sensitively rested this time out, but those that do make an appearance often have less screen time, with even the likes of Miss Piggy reduced to an extended cameo. The only two Muppets who get any extended screen time are Gonzo and Rizzo, as even the Ghosts themselves aren’t portrayed by regular Muppets (the original plan to have the ghosts portrayed by Miss Piggy, Scooter and Gonzo being, perhaps sensibly, put to bed).
But The Muppets Christmas Carol is a classic Christmas movie, even if, like many of its contemporaries, it didn’t grab audiences at the time. It’s A Wonderful Life wasn’t truly appreciated in its own lifetime, only finding life on cable TV re-runs many years later, and similarly The Muppets Christmas Carol struggled to find an audience first time round. Look at the box office chart (courtesy of Box Office Mojo) for 1992 for the US:
There it is, 47th best of the year. Note that it only just beat Howards End despite being on four times the number of screens, and lost miserably to The Lawnmower Man despite another screen advantage. (Screens is the number in the fifth column, in case you were wondering.) So why is it now so loved by so many at Christmas time?
In my book, there’s two reasons. One is the faithfulness of the adaptation; while respectful, it’s never reverential but captures just the essence of Dickens’ seminal seasonal story, even to the extent that the finer details, such as The Ghost Of Christmas Present aging during his time with Ebeneezer, are faithfully captured. The other reason is this:
Again, in a departure from previous efforts, there’s little human presence here. Steven Mackintosh is a moderately familiar face, and a couple of the young Scrooges have also popped up on TV, but the Muppet Christmas Carol stands and falls on the performance on one man, and thankfully the one man is one who has one of the safest pairs of hands in the business. Oddly, or maybe not, The Muppet Christmas Carol represents some of Caine’s best work and is certainly a better performance than at least one of the Oscars he’s picked up.
But while The Muppet Christmas Carol can stand toe to toe with It’s A Wonderful Life and Die Hard as perfect examples of Christmas movies, it’s not quite as good a Muppet movie as some of the earlier efforts. Guess you can’t win ’em all.
Current ranking of the Muppet movies
1. The Great Muppet Caper
2. The Muppet Christmas Carol
3. The Muppet Movie
4. The Muppets Take Manhattan
Next month Later today or tomorrow because I got quite some way behind: Pirates! AAAAR! It’s Muppet Treasure Island.
The Muppets Take Manhattan: It’s Not Easy Being Ginger
I set out on the odyssey that is BlogalongaMuppets for many reasons; partly my enthusiasm for the Muppets; partly for my anticipation for their upcoming film, The Muppets; but mainly because I’m a shameless plagiarist incapable of having my own ideas, content to copy other, more respectable Blogalongas. What I hadn’t realised before I started is quite how much I’d forgotten about the Muppet movies, having seen them all before – apparently; in the case of The Muppets Take Manhattan, this is particularly shameful as I saw half of it on TV only three months ago.
Watching The Muppets Take Manhattan on a lazy Bank Holiday a few short months ago inspired in me just enough nostalgia to start off this whole crazy enterprise, but having seen the first three in order, I’ve come to the unexpected realisation that The Muppets Take Manhattan is to The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppet Movie what Alien 3 is to Aliens and Alien. Let me briefly explain by running through the elements of the formula that I looked through for Movie and Caper.
BlogalongaMuppets: The Great Muppet Caper, Or How To Perfect The Formula
Two months in, and there was a nervous air of anticipation gripping BlogalongaMuppet HQ. I thought I remembered all of the Muppet movies from when I was younger, but I have to admit that, having watched it, I really didn’t recall much of The Muppet Movie. For some reason, I remembered the “watching-the-movie-within-the-movie” opening, I vaguely remembered Big Bird’s cameo and Animal bursting out of the top of a building left some sort of impression. But very little else in The Muppet Movie seemed to imprint on me, so it came as something of a surprise when I found it just a bit “meh”. And I was not alone; the general reaction to the first in the Muppet series from my fellow BlogalongaMuppeters was also to be similarly underwhelmed. What had I done? Like Moses leading the Israelites into the wilderness only to discover I’d left the satnav back at Pharaoh’s palace, I was suddenly concerned that this was all a mistake. Were we facing six months of tedium and torture?
Thankfully, of course, my concerns were unfounded, and the reason that we’re all looking forward to The Muppets next year is that the Muppets have made great movies before, and The Great Muppet Caper is a great Muppet movie. Somehow The Muppet Movie managed to get all of the pieces in place, but didn’t manage to quite get them to fit together, but Caper pulls it off much more successfully. So what did The Great Muppet Caper manage to do so much more successfully than its predecessor?
BlogalongaMuppets: Things I Learned While Watching The Muppet Movie
All good spin-offs start with some form of link or reference to the think which has spawned them, and BlogalongaMuppets will be no exception. There’s one difference between the Bond films and pretty much everything else: I, like pretty much every other blogger involved in BlogalongaBond, seems to have little difficulty in watching the films because they already own them. Whether it be Blu-ray, DVD or tatty VHS copies kept under the stairs, most red-blooded males (and females) seem to have direct access to the Bond films, but I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t own a single Muppet movie. Not even The Muppet Movie. So the first step to blogging about Muppets was to acquire a copy of the film itself.
That’s where my confusion started, because what arrived was this:
Those paying close attention will notice that it says “50th Anniversary Edition” at the bottom of that cover. Now, it doesn’t take a mathematics graduate or an astonishing pedant – both of which I happen to be, unsurprisingly – to work out that it’s not been 50 years since 1979. At least, not yet. But apparently, the anniversary was in 2005, and was Kermit’s 50th anniversary. The Muppets have been around in some form for 56 years, which would explain why they are part of so many people’s childhoods and why everyone descends into teary-eyed nostalgia when they are mentioned. They had managed three whole TV seasons, 72 episodes, before finally making the jump to the big screen, but the TV format wasn’t one that would easily adapt itself, generally being a loose collection of sketches tied together by Kermit’s attempts to keep everyone in check. (And usually failing miserably.)
So I can confess now that I’d never seen The Muppet Movie all the way through, despite having been just young enough (five) to have seen it when it came out the first time. So my observations are free of the burden of nostalgia and are instead laden with the bitter cynicism of a middle-aged man desperate to hang on to the last vestiges of childhood by writing about children’s films on a monthly basis. Anyway, here’s the main things that stood out for me having watched The Muppet Movie for the first time.
1. The Best Song Oscar really isn’t much of a category, is it?
The one thing that most people old enough to remember The Muppet Movie remember is the songs. Or, more specifically, the song – The Rainbow Connection, which managed to pick up a nomination for Best Original Song. There’s a couple of things to observe about that: firstly, that the competition that year wasn’t exactly memorable – if you’ve even heard of all the films that got a nomination that year, then well done you.
Winner: “It Goes Like It Goes” — Norma Rae
Also nominated:
“Through the Eyes of Love” — Ice Castles
“The Rainbow Connection” — The Muppet Movie
“I’ll Never Say Goodbye” — The Promise
“It’s Easy To Say” — 10
Sadly, the maudlin schmaltz about rainbows isn’t even the best song in The Muppet Movie – the toe-tapping Movin’ Right Along is much better for a start. If you don’t believe me:
So yet again, further proof that Oscar knows nothing, and that hearing enough songs about rainbows in 90 minutes will sap the patience of even the most upbeat person. It’s a cynical time we live in now, unfortunately.
2. The Muppets will certainly go far – they’ve got legs
Because my memories of the Muppets seem to be completely grounded in The Muppet Show, and fairly selectively at that, I’d forgotten that Muppets are actually meant to have legs, and the big screen and big budget allowed this conceit to be thoroughly explored. From riding a bike to sitting on a log in a swamp, Kermit behaves like any frog with legs would; so you have to applaud the technical wizardry and commitment (including Jim Henson spending a week in a hollow drum under a log in a swamp) to pull off that illusion.
(Of course, that doesn’t stop them doing the bobbing along walking thing that marks them out as Muppets whenever they move from any point to any other point. A walk which I spent most of my childhood doing, and my mother attempting to train me out of.)
3. You can convince pretty much anyone to be in a Muppet movie
What’s the best cast list of any film from the Seventies? The Godfather? The Deer Hunter? I’d argue it could be The Muppet Movie. What other movie could convincingly claim to have the best comedy cast of the decade? Not only does it have the freakin’ Muppets, but most movies would be happy to have one or two of the list of cameos above. As long, of course, as they got their Seventies counterparts; there’s a fair few names on that list that are now past their best, and that’s the ones that haven’t gone to the big Muppet show in the sky. But at the time, this was an impressive list. As the original series mustered one guest star a week, the net effect of this was like watching about two dozen episodes that had been ground up in a blender and then thrown at the screen.
4. You don’t even have to convince them to be onscreen
The other observation from the end credits is how many of the Muppet performers double up. Frank Oz, for example, portrays Miss Piggy, Fozzie and Animal, and Jim Henson is not only Kermit but Dr. Teeth. So who’s putting their arms up these Muppets? The answer, it seems, is quite a lot of people, including some well known names; John Landis, of all people, was making Grover’s mouth move, and according to him Tim Burton was also in that crowd (as a Muppet, obviously). The memorable days when both of them were actually making good movies…
5. The best bits, as always, are the bits with just the Muppets
But for all of those celebrity appearances, the best bits – in fact, by and large all of the good bits – of The Muppet Movie are the bits with just Muppets in. From the moment when Kermit turns out to be a much better comedian than Dom DeLuise (and for anyone old enough to remember The Cannonball Run, they’ll know how easy that is), the movie soars whenever the Muppets are on screen; at least in comparison to whenever the celebrities turn up and the film invariably stalls. The three exceptions to this are Charles Durning and Austin Pendleton, who have the job of driving the plot, such as it is, to the end of the movie, and aren’t bad, and Big Bird, who’s not a Muppet Show Muppet, but is still more entertaining in his – her – its – appearance than most of the Hollywood talent.
So overall the first Muppet movie is a mixed bag; extra celebrities, but at the same time a loss of the sketches that made so many love the Muppet Show in the first place. It was also astonishingly meta, to a level that would probably have made Christopher Nolan scratch his head; when The Electric Mayhem manage to locate Kermit based on the screenplay that he gave them earlier, it’s the equivalent of the giant Animal turning to face the audience and winking. But a new formula was being constructed, and it would be attempted a couple more times in Jim Henson’s lifetime.
Current ranking of the Muppet movies:
1. The Muppet Movie
Er, that’s it. Join me again next time for The Great Muppet Caper.
The Movie Evangelist 