"The Muppets" — Jason Segel, Amy Adams and friends deliver a very welcome return for Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the rest of Jim Henson's creations after a 12-year big-screen absence. From start to finish, the movie is a healthy, dizzy dose of childlike bliss, the songs campy but catchy, the humor corny but clever. Co-writer Segel and Adams play small-town tourists embarking on a quest to reunite the Muppets and save their old Hollywood studio, which is targeted for demolition by an evil oil man (Chris Cooper). Director James Bobin maintains a nimble pace throughout, the story gleefully dashing from song-and-dance numbers to hilarious montages to the sort of precious asides that are a staple of the Muppets, among them plenty of self-aware winks at Hollywood convention. Celebrity cameos, also a Muppet strength, are plentiful but a bit disappointing; after such a long time in mothballs, the Muppets deserve a better turnout of top stars to welcome them back. But overall, the movie's refreshing on every level, a piece of nostalgia so old it's new again, and a breather from Hollywood's 3-D digital onslaught in favor of fur and fuzz. PG for some mild rude humor. 110 minutes, including an amusing "Toy Story" short that precedes the movie. Three stars out of four.
• David Germain, AP Movie Writer
"Jason Segel is balancing a bowling pin atop his noggin.
The jolly actor-screenwriter is perched on the stage of a makeshift Muppet Theater that's been erected inside a mammoth Universal Studios soundstage. He's nervously grimacing while the furry blue daredevil Gonzo the Great winds his arm up in preparation to launch a bowling ball toward Segel for a stunt the pair are filming for "The Muppets."
Segel, who co-wrote the movie with "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" director Nicholas Stoller, is balancing more than just a bowling pin on his head these days: The Walt Disney Co., which acquired The Muppets franchise from The Jim Henson Co. in 2004, has entrusted him with the first big-screen adventure starring the felt-covered performance troupe in 12 years.
"I think at some point, The Muppets changed a little bit," said Segel during a break from filming earlier this year. "Our goal with this movie is to reintroduce The Muppets to kids in a way that's reminiscent of the movies from the late `70s and early `80s. The great thing about those movies and what Pixar does now is they don't pander or condescend to children."
Segel, a hardcore Muppet fan best known for his R-rated roles in such movies as "Knocked Up" and "I Love You, Man," petitioned Disney brass to resurrect The Muppets with Stoller in a way that would appeal to both nostalgic adults who grew up watching "The Muppet Show" and children more familiar with computer-generated 3-D animation than big-eyed puppets.
In the film, out Wednesday, Segel and Amy Adams play a small-town couple named Gary and Mary who — along with Gary's puppet brother Walter (portrayed by Peter Linz) — work to reunite The Muppets. It seems the felt ones have found themselves irrelevant in an entertainment landscape dominated by such over-the-top fictional game shows as "Punch Teacher."
The musical's story line mirrors The Muppets' own reality. They haven't starred in a film together since the 2005 made-for-TV movie "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz" and have been absent from theaters since 1999's "The Muppets in Space."
"It's funny that the success of the movie might undo the story itself," said director James Bobin. "That's what actually drew me to the story. I was struck by how honest it was and with real artistic license portrayed how people perceive The Muppets at this time. One of the great emotional drives in any story is getting the band back together."
The new movie finds The Muppets off doing their own thing: Fozzie Bear is languishing in a tribute band called The Moopets, Miss Piggy is sashaying around Paris as a fashion editor, Animal is treating his anger management issues at rehab, Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem are performing in the New York subway and Scooter is working at Google.
The filmmakers, most of whom have never worked with puppets, let alone The Muppets, closely collaborated with the puppeteers who have been portraying these characters for years. One particular meeting with them led Segel and Stoller to axe any self-referential jokes and puns about The Muppets being puppets. "I wonder how that felt," for example, was a goner.
"We're all partners on this movie," said producer Todd Lieberman. "We grew up on The Muppets, but these guys have been living it for 20 years. They know these characters better than any of us possibly could because they've been doing it for 20 years. They know the characters, and they know the style. They know what to do and what not to do for the brand."
Adams, who ran the award show gauntlet earlier this year for her role in "The Fighter," found it more difficult to switch between flashy gowns at night and Mary's conservative ensembles by day during production than working with puppets. She said acting opposite puppets like Walter wasn't any more difficult than working opposite actors like Mark Wahlberg.
"Once you accept that the puppet that you're working with is an actual character, it really is no different from working with another human actor," said Adams. "The puppeteers are geniuses at disappearing. I don't know how they do it, but they do it. I see Peter and Walter as two completely separate beings. Peter is Peter, and Walter is Walter."
The immersive set design helped, too. For the new Muppet Theater that's supposed to look like it's abandoned until The Muppets give it a makeover, production designer Steve Saklad and his team incorporated the towering theater set built in 1924 for "Phantom of the Opera," which is still standing inside a soundstage on the Universal Studios backlot.
"We were originally going to shoot the parts of the Muppet Theater scenes that face the audience in a historic downtown Los Angeles theater, but it would've been limiting for the director to split everything up," said Saklad. "I think it worked out for the best because now we've got this huge, luscious theater covered in a thousand coats of paint."
Saklad said the new Muppet Theater set was put in storage after production on "The Muppets," just in case it's required for a sequel, and he's hoping that no one paints over the "Phantom of the Opera" walls. However, the prospect of The Muppets as a rejuvenated franchise featuring Segel is one the actor-screenwriter can't seem to fathom.
"That would certainly be amazing," said Segel sheepishly. "It's not something I'm even thinking about right now. I'm still focused on this movie. My big goal was just to re-establish The Muppets where they belonged. From there, everything else is gravy. I just wanted to see The Muppets again the way I remembered them."
"As someone who grew up on "Sesame Street," I often imagined that one day, I'd be able to go through the TV screen and live in a brownstone next to Ernie and Bert and Oscar and Big Bird. So when I saw Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), the new Muppet character from "The Muppets," have that same dream about following Kermit and Fozzie and Miss Piggy to the other side of the glass, I knew that the Muppets' return to the big screen was in loving and capable hands.
Sure, the plot borrows heavily from "The Muppet Movie" (this time, Kermit has to reunite everyone rather than get the band together) and the TV movie, "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie," wherein an evil financier wants to steal the Muppets' theater. This time Chris Cooper's oil billionaire steps in for Joan Cusack's banker.
But "The Muppets" has the same brilliant absurdity, anarchic humor, subtle uplift and ensemble comedy that fans have come to expect over the years.
Jim Henson may be gone, but a new generation of writers and performers are doing right by his creations.
The aforementioned Walter has grown up loving the Muppets, as has his brother and best friend Gary (Jason Segel, who also co-wrote the film). Gary takes his longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) to L.A. to celebrate their tenth anniversary, and Walter tags along to see the sights -- not that there are many of those to behold at the decrepit Muppet Studios, a moth-eaten shadow of its former self.
Walter sneaks into Kermit's old office and hears the ruthless Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) detail his plans to buy the studio and the theater under the guise of building a Muppet museum, even though his real agenda is to tear it all down and dig for oil underneath.
Horrified, the small-town trio track down Kermit (voiced by Steve Whitmire), who's puttering around a moldering Bel-Air mansion, nostalgic for the past. Walter inspires Kermit to reassemble the Muppets to hold a benefit telethon to save the theater, sending them off to collect Fozzie Bear (voiced by Eric Jacobson), who's performing with a tribute act called "The Moopets" in Reno; Gonzo (voiced by Dave Goelz), now a successful plumbing-fixtures magnate, and all the rest.
In true Muppet fashion, there's a montage of tracking down beloved characters -- and people in the movie mention the fact that they're in a montage.
But there are challenges, of course: can Kermit convince his estranged girlfriend Miss Piggy (Jacobson) to leave her gig as plus-size editor at French Vogue to return to the fold? Will the Muppets find a celebrity in Kermit's 1970s Rolodex to host the telethon? And will Walter figure out what talents he might have in time for the show?
The plot, as you may well imagine, is secondary to the barrage of jokes, songs, fourth-wall violations and occasional celebrity cameos that are part and parcel of the big-screen Muppet experience. And "The Muppets" gets all of this just right. Several of the new tunes are from "Flight of the Conchords" songwriter Bret McKenzie. "Conchords" vet James Bobin directs the new movie.
While Segel -- who memorably worked singing puppets into "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" -- and Adams are perfectly charming, and totally get into the spirit of things, can we take a moment to acknowledge what a great performer Kermit the Frog is? He's got one of the most expressive skulls in show business (albeit also one of the softest ones), and he can convey a panoply of emotions just by indenting his temples or folding in his top lip. All of the Muppets, of course, have that gift of smiling by opening their mouths as widely as possible.
There are one or two draggy moments in "The Muppets," but nothing that will render young audiences any more fidgety than, say, the "Never Before and Never Again" number in the original "The Muppet Movie." And for Muppet fans who, like "Star Wars" nerds, speak breathlessly of "the original trilogy" -- namely, "The Muppet Movie," "The Great Muppet Caper," and "The Muppets Take Manhattan" -- this reboot stands proudly, wackily, and adorably with its storied predecessors.
Even if Statler (Whitmire) and Waldorf (Goelz) are still heckling them."
Not all there is to read from Yahoo, though.
Good stuff. I think they made a great return to the big screen. Here's to more in the future!
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