The Muppets (2011)

No Drums!  No Drums!  Jack Black Said No Drums!

The impetus behind my decision to pull this movie out of a RedBox was the nagging of the inner child I had thought I had killed years ago.  That little bastard and I had a battle many years ago where I left him for dead, bleeding like a stuck Miss Piggy.  It turns out he had been nursing his wounds, waiting for the right moment to shoot himself out of a cannon and back into my heart.  When today’s movie came out in theaters, I started getting threatening messages with letters cut out of magazines that never really amounted to anything.  Today, when this movie came out on DVD, he knew this was his chance to strike.  That really strange story aside, I rented today’s movie from a RedBox and decided to give it a shot to live up to the love I had for this crew in my youth.  Today’s movie is The Muppets, written by Jim Henson, Jason Segel, and Nicholas Stoller, directed by James Bobin, and starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Jack Black, Alan Arkin, Emily Blunt, Zach Galifianakis, Donald Glover, Dave Grohl, Ken Jeong, Jim Parsons, Kristen Schaal, and Sarah Silverman, the voices of Peter Linz, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Tyler Bunch, Alice Dinnean, and Jerry Nelson, and notable cameos by James Carville, Bill Cobbs, Feist, Whoopi Goldberg, Selena Gomez, Neil Patrick Harris, Judd Hirsch, John Krasinski, Rico Rodriguez, and Mickey Rooney.

Walter (Peter Linz) and Gary (Jason Segel) are brothers that live in a small town called … Smalltown.  But Walter was born with a birth defect of sorts that makes him a Muppet.  Because of this, Gary and Walter become big fans of the Muppet Show.  When they grow up, Gary is preparing to go on vacation to LA with his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) and surprises Walter by taking him with them.  While in LA, they visit the abandoned Muppet studio.  Walter sneaks into the office of Kermit the Frog and finds out that Statler (Steve Whitmire) and Waldorf (Dave Goelz) are selling the theater to oil magnate Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), who intends to demolish it and drill for oil beneath the studio.  Walter, Gary, and Mary manage to convince Kermit to get the band back together to raise $10 million to save the theater before it’s too late.

My inner child must’ve fixed his hooks in pretty deeply, because I was still charmed by the Muppets.  I realize that, beyond nostalgia, it doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for adults, but kids should probably enjoy it.  I base that mostly on the crap I’ve watched that kids are into today (I’m looking at you, Dora and Yo Gabba Gabba!).  The Muppets are way better than the crap kids watch today, and I stand by that!  I actually got goosebumps when watching the opening to The Muppet Show that I had not seen in ages.  It’s silly and ridiculous, but generally it’s well aware of that fact.  What’s more important is that it’s charming, and there are actually a couple of genuine laughs in the movie.  I especially liked some of the 4th wall-breaking jokes, like when Kermit said he wasn’t going to get the band back together and Mary said, “This is going to be a really short movie.”  I also liked when the Swedish Chef said, “Say hello to my little friend,” before using a flamethrower on a mold-infested fridge, mainly because it came out as, “Herdy gerdy me Gerdy Fler!”  If you want to nitpick (and you know I do), there are a couple of things in the story that didn’t make sense to me.  First, that Walter and Gary are so starstruck with the Muppets when Walter is, himself, a Muppet.  Okay, you let that one go.  The one that bothered me (and yes, I know, more than it should’ve) was the prospect of earning the money to save the theater.  I know that every problem in Muppetland is solved with a show; that’s not the problem.  The problem is, while getting the band back together, they had to get Gonzo from the business he owns (the world’s most successful plumbing parts business) and Miss Piggy from running Vogue Paris.  They couldn’t toss a couple of bucks towards saving the theater?  They might not have wanted to supply all $10 million, but you could’ve given them at least half and let the people do the rest.  The musical numbers were a little cheesy for my taste, but I didn’t really expect much else.  The one that Amy Adams does by herself is just sad.  Not because of her voice, but because doing a musical number about trying to act happy that you’re spending time by yourself while no one else is joining in is one of the most depressing things ever.  I also found it very amusing that they had an all chicken rendition of Cee-lo Green’s “Fuck You”.  That’s an interesting choice for a Muppet movie, but I guess “Buck buck” is not that offensive, even if it’s chicken for “Fuck you.”

The performances of the people had to be hammed up because it’s a kids movie, but no one really did bad.  Amy Adams is super cute, Jason Segel comes off as a nice guy, and Jack Black just acts nuts.  The performance of the Muppets is still a well honed art.  By this time, you know these guys are experts at making felt look like it has emotions and personality, and I don’t think enough credit goes to these guys for that skill.  We just take it for granted.  I’ve also notice that computer graphics (and probably green screens) have enabled them to do more things with the Muppets than they used to be able to, allowing them to do full body Muppet movements by having the puppeteer wear a green suit.  That ability doesn’t add a whole lot to them, but it’s interesting.  One of the most interesting things about this (and a lot of other Muppet movies) is the cameos.  Though many of them only pop in for a second, or just for one line of dialogue, the cameos are really widespread and eclectic.  Zach Galifianakis was funny in his part, and was actually around a bit longer than most.  Jim Parsons (of the Big Bang Theory) plays Walter’s imaginary human form, so people that watch that show might be interested in that.  I was also super impressed with myself that I was one of the few people that would be able to recognize the singer Feist and Bill Cobbs even though most people couldn’t recognize them given an entire day and their scenes combined added up to about 10 seconds.  You can read the credits up above to have as comprehensive a list of the cameos as I could muster.

I kind of liked the Muppets movie.  It’s both not meant for me and completely meant for me.  It’s made for kids, which I am not, but it’s also made for people who loved the Muppets when they were kids, which I am.  Speaking to parents, I would say to try to get your kids into the Muppets instead of the crap that they watch now.  Muppets are so much better than that shit they’re watching now, and you can actually watch and enjoy the Muppets instead of watching with a morbid curiosity in the same way I watched Yo Gabba Gabba.  Now that it’s available from RedBox, I’d say you should give it a watch, especially if you loved the Muppets in your childhood or if you have kids and you don’t want Dora to teach them Spanish.  The Muppets gets “Kermit, you’re my hero.  You’re on my watch” out of “We all agreed: celebrities aren’t people.”

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

My sister requested a movie review a while back that I finally got in from Netflix and finally got a chance to sit down and watch.  I assume that it was more of a “torture my brother” type thing, much as her other request, Sex and the City, but I am up to any challenge.  Breakfast at Tiffany’s stars Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, and Mickey Rooney.  Everyone else in the cast I don’t recognize, either because they weren’t really famous or because they probably died years before I was born.

I will probably have a bit of trouble with this summary as I could barely follow this movie, but here goes.  Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a story about a girl named Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) who likes to eat her early morning meal in front of a certain high-end jewelry store.  If names this blunt are allowed I can only assume the movie about my life will be called “All Day at the Xbox”.  Well Holly meets a guy that just moved into her apartment building named Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a writer on hard times.  Holly makes her money by passing coded messages from a mobster regarding his drug ring.  She has parties all the time and is a bit of a free spirit and Paul is more reserved, but the two decide they should be friends anyway.  Not long after their meeting, Paul meets “Doc” Golightly (Jed Clampett himself, Buddy Epsen) who identifies himself as her husband.  Holly explains to Paul that their marriage was annulled, I assume because she was 14 when they married, and they send Doc on his way back home on a bus.  Paul starts to develop feelings for Holly but she is having none of it because her plan is to marry a rich guy.  Eventually she decides she’s going to move to Brazil for this rich guy named Jose, then she finds out her brother died while in the Army, then the drug thing comes back to bite her in the ass and she gets arrested.

I understand that this movie is a classic and iconic movie in many ways.  Having never seen the movie, I still recognized many things from it and was fairly familiar with it before I actually watched it.  That being said, I spent the greater majority of this movie not knowing what was going on.  I assume one could say the central idea of the movie is Holly and Paul getting together but then there’s all these strange little side plots going on there like Holly’s many relationships, Paul’s relationship and job, the drug thing, there was a cat in there, and someone put the telephone in the suitcase.  I understand the movie, but honestly cannot work out it’s appeal.  The comedy of the movie wasn’t funny to me but, being a movie that’s almost double my age, that is understandable.  I don’t know much about this time or how movies were handled back then.  Adding to that the fact that this is a chick flick and considering I’m not that old and male, I figure this is just not my type of movie.  Not to say that this movie is horrible, I just don’t get it.

The performances were all well done, at least from what I understand of how people acted back then.  Audrey Hepburn’s character annoyed me at times, but she was still so charming that I couldn’t hate her for it.  George Peppard acted exactly as I expect people in 60’s movies to act.  Buddy Ebsen has a small but emotional part to the movie.  The Mickey Rooney part was the part that caught my attention, mainly because I had seen it before and wasn’t sure back then what movie it was from.  In Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, he goes on a date with Lauren Holly to see, apparently, this movie, but left when they saw Mickey Rooney’s stereotype Asian character, especially problematic because Mickey Rooney’s white.  I certainly wasn’t offended by it, but I’m a racist.

I can’t figure much else to say about this movie.  If you’re much older and female, you might like this movie.  If you’re me (and I’m pretty sure you’re not), you won’t hate it but, unlike non-mutants in the X-Men comics, I don’t hate and fear things I don’t understand.  I give this movie a “4 if you’re 40 and/or female, but 2.5 if you’re me” out of 730.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.