BEFORE: Oh, sure, I COULD have watched all the Muppets' movies together, but where's the fun in that? I almost forgot about this one, but it slots in here nicely after another comedy (?) about aliens. Linking from "The Watch", Ben Stiller was also in "There's Something About Mary" with Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Hangover Part II").
THE PLOT: Gonzo is contacted by his alien family through his breakfast cereal. He is kidnapped and it's up to Kermit and the gang to rescue Gonzo and help reunite him with his long-lost family.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Muppets" (Movie #1,329)
AFTER: I drank the Henson Kool-Aid when I was a kid, raised on Sesame Street, as were many other kids, and I followed the Muppets through their first movie, then I kind of hit the wall with the whole thing. I think it's too simple to say I grew up, because I know a few adults who are still very into the Muppet thing, but I guess I developed other interests. You'd think that since Yoda was essentially a Muppet (at first, anyway) that my love for Star Wars would have brought me back, but it didn't work out that way.
So now that I've caught back up with the Muppets, do I feel like I missed out over the years? Well, not really. After "The Great Muppet Caper" they sort of went into a phase that wasn't all that creative, re-making "Treasure Island", "The Wizard of Oz" and "A Christmas Carol" with puppets isn't really all that original, it's just re-branding of other people's stories. Which may explain why the franchise was bought by DisneyCorp, which co-opted "Tarzan", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "The Little Mermaid" and most of Grimm's fairy tales in order to re-brand them as Disney tales. It's shameful on one level, but also genius from a marketing standpoint.
The laugh was on the Muppets, however, since it seemed for a while like Disney bought them just to shelve them for a while, essentially removing a bit of the competition for other Disney + Pixar films. Of course the death of Jim Henson figures heavily into the Muppet timeline, so that might explain why there wasn't much original Muppet material coming out for a while. This film was the first original script for them in about 15 years, and the last one before they sold out to Disney/ABC/ESPN, aka our future corporate overlords.
So, Gonzo's an alien. (Sorry, spoiler alert) Makes some sense, since Kermit's a frog and Fozzie's a bear and they never really could decide what Gonzo was, but as a kid I thought I'd cracked the code. He had a weird beak-like nose, and was always hanging out with chickens. So I thought the most ironic thing would be if he turned out to be some kind of chicken-hawk, and he was just really bad at that. That made sense to me at the time, but the Muppet team went a different way with it. (What about that weird Rasta Muppet, is he an alien too? Or just a Jamaican one?)
They also went a different way with the soundtrack, instead of the usual original Muppet-like songs they decided to license a bunch of soul classics, like "Celebration", "Shining Star", "It's Your Thing", and "Brick House". Some work, some not so much. "Brick House" is a song about a woman, yet it's sung by all the Muppets in the morning to demonstrate that they all live in the same house. Umm, no. Wouldn't something like "We Are Family" make more sense?
So, yeah, Gonzo finds out he's an alien, Miss Piggy becomes a reporter, and the U.S. government wants to know about aliens. That's it, that's all that happens. And no one got hurt in the process of writing an actual story or trying to make stuff happen. I know you have to keep things simple for the kids, but this is way too simple.
Also starring the Muppet peformers (Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Brian Henson, Bill Barretta), Andie MacDowell, Rob Schneider (last seen in "50 First Dates"), Pat Hingle (last seen in "Sudden Impact"), Kathy Griffin (last seen in "The Muppets"), with cameos from David Arquette, Ray Liotta (last seen in "Wanderlust"), F. Murray Abraham, Josh Charles, Hulk Hogan (last heard in "Gnomeo & Juliet"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Phone Booth").
RATING: 4 out of 10 cement trucks
In a way, I was glad that made this film, but really it was just made to answer a question that really didn't need to be answered, "What is Gonzo?", which has been a running joke, and one that now would be out of place.
ReplyDeleteI would hope that you didn't forgo the Muppet Show, which I think is the highlight of all the Muppet creations. Also, the Muppet 3-D film at Disney is quite good, as well as A Muppet Family Christmas (but the US version of the DVD has been edited, probably thanks to the legal department!).
For me, once I saw the Great Muppet Caper, I kind of lost interest in the Muppets as well, and I wasn't particularly interested in Jim Henson's other projects (especially those which were on TV)