I'd heard a lot of praise for this film, and having loved The Muppet Movie for several years, I decided to give this a shot.
In many respects, this is a perfect sequel to the older film. That movie is treated as canonical backstory for this one, and tonally, it's shockingly similar. The comedy is just as absurd and disregarding of a fourth wall as it was before, the film is still musical, and celebrity cameos fill the movie in the same way. My favorite is a case where the actor actually kinda reprises the character that shot them to stardom, being a cameo and a movie reference at the same time. The Muppets are all accounted for and there's clearly a love for the original franchise and the stories told in it.
But then there's how we enter the plot, which never feels like it was the right decision. Since the Muppets are all broken up and have to be reunited, the film needs to have new characters tracking them down, but they then have to remain in the film and find something to do. It doesn't help that they chose possibly the weirdest characters to enter the story with—a pair of brothers, one human, one Muppet, and the human one's girlfriend. The Muppet brother, Walter, grew up obsessed with the show because they made him feel seen, and he helps start the quest to reunite the group. Gary, his brother struggles with being mature and attentive to his girlfriend Mary. There's even what feels like disability subtext as we see Walter fail to grow taller alongside his brother and remain more childlike and struggling a bit with his size and that could be interesting...but these characters aren't what we came here for and they continue to feel awkward as the film has to come back to them and fit them in somehow. Surely there was a better way to write this film so the Muppet cast were the entry while still being separate. I know there's the fun factor of not seeing them until their big debut scenes as we're placed with the Muppet Muppet-fan meeting them, but a stronger story could have had them introduced apart and then brought together with no outside forces as lead characters.
I don't know. I still enjoyed myself immensely watching this movie and it did give me The Muppets. It's a great time, but not the most sensibly scripted.
A hilarious worthy tribute that struggles with its dramatis personae.
I'd heard a lot of praise for this film, and having loved The Muppet Movie for several years, I decided to give this a shot.
In many respects, this is a perfect sequel to the older film. That movie is treated as canonical backstory for this one, and tonally, it's shockingly similar. The comedy is just as absurd and disregarding of a fourth wall as it was before, the film is still musical, and celebrity cameos fill the movie in the same way. My favorite is a case where the actor actually kinda reprises the character that shot them to stardom, being a cameo and a movie reference at the same time. The Muppets are all accounted for and there's clearly a love for the original franchise and the stories told in it.
But then there's how we enter the plot, which never feels like it was the right decision. Since the Muppets are all broken up and have to be reunited, the film needs to have new characters tracking them down, but they then have to remain in the film and find something to do. It doesn't help that they chose possibly the weirdest characters to enter the story with—a pair of brothers, one human, one Muppet, and the human one's girlfriend. The Muppet brother, Walter, grew up obsessed with the show because they made him feel seen, and he helps start the quest to reunite the group. Gary, his brother struggles with being mature and attentive to his girlfriend Mary. There's even what feels like disability subtext as we see Walter fail to grow taller alongside his brother and remain more childlike and struggling a bit with his size and that could be interesting...but these characters aren't what we came here for and they continue to feel awkward as the film has to come back to them and fit them in somehow. Surely there was a better way to write this film so the Muppet cast were the entry while still being separate. I know there's the fun factor of not seeing them until their big debut scenes as we're placed with the Muppet Muppet-fan meeting them, but a stronger story could have had them introduced apart and then brought together with no outside forces as lead characters.
I don't know. I still enjoyed myself immensely watching this movie and it did give me The Muppets. It's a great time, but not the most sensibly scripted.