Only a paid critic would say this was as good as The Muppets!
Swift shot: Where’s the star? The Muppets exploded a few years ago with avid Muppetphile Jason Segel and Amy Adams attacking the film with as much intensity as Rizzo the Rat going after cheese, but there was no comparable star power in Muppets: Most Wanted. In fact, the title is ironic, as it left me wanting more.
Starring . . . no one, but with plenty of cameos strewn throughout the 112 minute run time, Muppets: Most Wanted is essentially a stale re-hash of the The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan, which were much better and had real stars (of the time) behind them. In those films, Miss Piggy is framed for stealing jewels, and The Muppets travel throughout Europe getting into funny situations and there is a Muppet wedding.
In Muppets: Most Wanted, Ricky Gervais plays pompous Dominic Badguy, #2 to super-spy, mastermind criminal #1 Constantine (a frog identical to Kermit save one large mole). There is a less than inspiring song about how Badguy is always going to be #2. It lacks anything comparable to the Academy Award winning Man or Muppet also written by Bret McKenzie.
Constantine frames The Muppets for jewel heists around Europe, as Ty Burrell as some French inspector that is always taking Socialism approved breaks works with Sam Eagle [Swift aside: my favorite muppet] a barely capable CIA agent to find The Lemur (an international jewel thief). They bumble and stumble and provide probably the only real laughs of the film, as many of the other jokes just didn’t cut it for me, a Muppet connoisseur. My six year old kid was less than thrilled by many of the kid-targeted pratfalls and physical comedy . . . and, he likes just about everything at this age. And the parent-targeted humor received merely a passing grade.
That was the film’s major flaw, aside from the lack of star power, it wasn’t strong on any level. The juvenile jokes were sub-par, and the parental targeted jokes were less funny. I will admit that my favorite scene had to do with Tina Fey as a Siberian prison guard revealing a softer side to her character, but there was no real emotion in any of the film. Heck, I remember actually feeling for Amy Adams in the last film, and Walter and Gary – but with Muppets: Most Wanted, it was like one big joke that I wasn’t a part of.
Now, let me say one thing I really, really enjoyed about Muppets: Most Wanted, it was a direct attack on the 2012 Presidential selection, err, election. See, Constantine is an impostor, and while the Muppets (on the surface) can’t grasp that, deep in their hearts they know there is something just off with Kermit (who is rotting in that previously mentioned Siberian Gulag).
They even spoon-feed the metaphor at the end, when The Muppets realize that the false-Kermit was going along with everything they wanted to do, no questions asked, the reviews were great, they were getting free stuff and it didn’t matter that they kinda had a hunch Kermit was, well, not Kermit. See the comparison there? I sure did! The way that Constantine was manipulating the reviews and padding the audience was lost on The Muppets, because they were happy living in the fantasy that they were ever that good.
Sadly, and I do mean that because I wanted it to be different, but this Muppets film was just not that great, folks. There was no star of the show, I have already seen a Piggy/Kermit wedding, and the lack of Amy Adams and Jason Segel just couldn’t be surpassed. I won’t call this a major disappointment, but it will leave only a minor mark.
Basically, if you are going to bore me OR my kid, I can understand you targeted one of us more than the other, but if you bore us both, what’s the point? I expected better.
