In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!
Is there really a bad Muppet movie? If we count TV movies, heck yeah (The Muppets Wizard of Oz may be the nadir of all Muppet media), but in terms of theatrically released films, I wouldn't say so, which is impressive when you realize that we've had eight different Muppets films released over the course of forty years. But there are middling Muppet movies and Muppets From Space. While it has its fair share of gags that work, most of them coming from Bobo The Bear ("Baby steps sir, baby steps"), this one feels like the only Muppet movie that's really phoned in. Hallmark elements of the series are particularly poorly handled, as original musical numbers are ditched for a bunch of 1970's pop song needle drops while the requisite celebrity cameos are lacking in star power and fun (were two cameo's from Dawson's Creek the best they could do?). There's also too much of new Muppet Pepe The Prawn, a character they were trying to make a thing so badly that even five-year-old me was rubbed the wrong way. Muppets From Space has just enough of the old Muppet magic to make it watchable, much of it coming from Dave Goelz shining in his long-time role as Gonzo, but it's easily the weakest this series has to offer.
Intended in its creation to be a good-bye to the Muppets (for a while at least), The Muppets Take Manhattan now stands, in the larger history of these characters, as "merely" a solid entry in the long-running series. But even one of the weaker Muppet movies manages to have some memorable tunes like Somebody's Getting Married and fun jokes at its disposal, while some affecting pathos gets wrung out of these characters going their separate ways at the start of the story. Said story tends to be more conventional than it should be but at least it allows for some reasonably enjoyable Muppet antics to transpire.
Serving as a follow-up to 2011's The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted took a cue from any number of family movie sequels and took its main characters overseas. That's not the only story element that bears too much familiarity to other family movies of the same era, with a case of mistaken identity and a reliance on referencing classic espionage movies being similarly derivative While the story was paint-by-numbers, at least a number of the jokes were a hoot, with newbie character Constantine being a riot and songwriter Bret McKenzie delivering another exceptional batch of Muppet-y tunes. Muppets Most Wanted, as a whole, is similar to The Muppets Take Manhattan in quality, serviceable and frequently entertaining but it also feels like the result of people capable of more jogging in place.
This might be the Muppet movie I've seen the most amount of times simply because it was a go-to fixture in my Elementary School for teachers needing something to distract their students whenever recess got rained out. Anywho, this take on Robert Louis Stevenson's beloved novel is a whole bunch of fun, particularly due to the presence of the second best human performance in any Muppet movie. I'm of course talking about Tim Curry as Long John Silver, a role that Curry just seems to be having a blast with. He's so much fun playing off against his puppet co-stars, who are themselves a hoot filling out the various established roles from Stevenson's novel. You get all of that plus that awesome moment at the end when Sweetums ends up being a good guy? No wonder this is such a fun seatime voyage of a movie!
The Muppet Movie
"The one that started it all" is a phrase usually used to describe Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, but it's also applicable to The Muppet Movie, which was the very first theatrically released Muppet film. Though it's got some draggy sequences (namely Miss Piggy's Never Before musical number), The Muppet Movie still stands out as a noteworthy motion picture over four decades later beyond just being the first entry in this franchise. Most notably, the songs in this one are just excellent, particularly I'm Going To Go Back There Someday and of course The Rainbow Connection. The story also has some delightful ways for the various Muppets to meet one another for the very first time and has some equally entertaining ways of breaking the fourth wall. It's no wonder we'd get so many more Muppet movies in the subsequent years after The Muppert Movie was released when this initial motion picture so great!
Despite how well-done the original Muppet movie was, it's its sequel that I'd consider to be the best of the original three Muppet films. The pathos got put on the back-burner for The Great Muppet Caper as a barrage of gags took center stage and what fun gags they are! From the opening scene showing Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo providing commentary on the opening credits, we're off to the races with all kinds of hysterical gags like oodles of self-referential lines of dialogue (the best being a nod to some expository dialogue), the fact that Kermit and Fozzie are playing twins in this and the sight gag of what Kermit and Fozzie's father looks like. The Great Muppet Caper proved that The Muppet Movie was no fluke and that these Muppet characters were fully capable of headlining entertaining movies.
The two best Muppet movies, for my money, find their high level of quality in utilizing how much emotional heft can be wrung out of these wacky characters. Certainly, The Muppets Christmas Carol finds itself being not just one of the best Muppet movies but also one of the best Christmas movies by having The Muppets adapt Charles Dickens iconic yuletide text in a heartfelt manner, one whose emotional qualities are bolstered by a beautiful performance by Michael Caine. Caine is taking things 100% seriously here in his turn as Ebenezer Scrooge and that's the perfect way to go with this role, it makes his character's transformation from miser to reformed soul so impactful. Just try and not get choked up at Caine's Scrooge interacting with Beaker in the climax, it's impossible not to get teary-eyed!
When The Muppets came out in November 2011, 12 whole years had passed since the Muppets had starred in a feature film, their longest absence from the silver screen since they started starring in motion pictures. Could that old Muppet magic be recaptured by a new generation? Turns out, yes they could! Writer and star Jason Segel alongside director James Bobin managed to make not just a satisfying new Muppet movie but the new apex of the entire Muppet movie saga as well as the best movie of 2011 (don't @ me on that last one, I stand by it whole-heartedly). It's incredibly impressive how this movie manages to use new puppet character Walter as a protagonist whose plight of wanting to feel like he can belong somewhere can help reintroduce moviegoers to The Muppets while also making the film still center around Kermit and company. Balancing those storylines is a tricky act that could have left this film feeling like Walter: The Movie Featuring Some Classic Muppets, but instead this totally feels like a proper Muppet movie just with some well-integrated new blood. Plus, the two elements that the Muppets excel at, comedy and pathos, are in top form here, with inspired jokes (like Chris Cooper's villain's recurring tendency to command his henchmen to bellow out "Maniacal laugh!") and touching moments being in heavy supply. At once a heartwarming ode to the legacy of these Muppet characters, a joyous musical romp (the original songs in this movie, all penned by Bret McKenzie, are just outstanding) and the sole feature film in existence where puppets debate the legality of kidnapping Jack Black ("You inspire them!" "To kidnap people??"), The Muppets is like a modern-day version of Singin' In The Rain, two hours of pure cinematic bliss.
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