The Muppets (2011) + A giveaway

[starlady]

Unrelated at the top: ahorbinski is giving away a copy of Mechademia 6. I already have one of my own, but you should totally check it out!

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The Muppets. Dir. James Bobin, 2011.

I went to see this with epershand the other week, and we laughed so hard that the people next to us in the theater gave us very disapproving looks repeatedly. Fuck them! The Muppets is a multi-layered, knowing, joyful confection of a movie that basically epitomizes the term "feel-good film."

For a globally popular entertainment property, the Muppets always seem to be on the verge of disaster, and this film is no different: there's two weeks to go until an evil Texas oil baron is going to foreclose on the Muppets studio for the oil reserves under it and take ownership of the Muppets IP in the bargain. The Muppets' biggest fan Walter, on a trip to L.A. with his brother and his brother's girlfriend, single-handedly takes on the task of getting the Muppets to get back together and do a telethon to raise the $10 million US they need to buy their names and their studio back. Along the way they gather up the old gang from their scattered places (of course Scooter went to work for Google! Perfection!), break the fourth wall liberally, recall the original Muppets Tonight, meet up with old friends and make some new ones, and sing "The Rainbow Connection," which is a song I have loved since childhood when I first saw The Muppet Movie. So, in other words, I was more than satisfied.

That said, I was impressed at how well the movie played to its core demographic, namely nerdy people our age, with cameos from Neil Patrick Harris, the guy from Big Bang Theory, and mini-reunions of the casts of Community and Parks and Rec (as well as a slew of cameos, including Emily Blunt reprising her role in The Devil Wears Prada). There's also, as epershand talked about in her review, an interesting and at least semi-ironic meta-narrative on the Muppets IP and who gets to own it, with the conclusion that the Muppets will still be the Muppets no matter who owns the rights to use their names sitting oddly in juxtaposition with the fact that Disney now owns the Muppets IP and made this movie without the participation of the original muppeteers.

So like I said, multi-layered and delightful.

Comments

[boundbooks]

I haven't and probably won't see the Muppet movie (actually wasn't ever planning on it, because I was never into the Muppets), but do you have thoughts on karnythia's post about racism in the movie?

Also: nathanfisher: Racial Coding in The Muppets

[starlady]

I have not read the post, but the fake Muppets the villain goes into cahoots with, the Moopets, are definitely coded according to some pretty vile racial stereotypes. I don't think I'm going to ascribe that to the Muppets now being part of Disney, despite Disney's long and atrocious history of vocal stereotyping particularly in its animated films (a tradition taken up by Pixar, notably in Toy Story 3). There have been other Muppets coded as black in the past, particularly Clifford, and I don't think their portrayal totally escapes fail, even though Clifford in particular was portayed in a much more positive manner.

[boundbooks]

Cool, thanks for your thoughts! Yeah, the post pretty much describes the fake Muppets and the problems therein.

[lnhammer]

We saw this with my parents opening weekend. It was an excellent all-family movie, and yes it was definitely aimed at fans of the original late-70s Muppet Show -- so much so, we were worried how well it would play to children until, coming out the theater, we heard a gaggle singing "mahna mahna."

---L, doo-doo do-dee-do.