By: debbie lynn elias
Let’s face it. Do I really need to even review THE MUPPETS for you? No matter what I or anyone else says, you’re all gonna go see THE MUPPETS! And besides, how can anyone not love THE MUPPETS?
This is the HAPPIEST movie of the year. You will smile from ear to ear the entire movie and tear up with poignant joy more than once. And then those song and dance numbers! Look out Busby Berkeley! Your toes will be tapping and you’ll want to sing along. And how can you ever go wrong with cameos by, among others, Whoopi Goldberg, Neil Patrick Harris, Jack Black, Demi Lovato, Alan Arkin, James Carville (yes, James Carville – like I said, everyone loves THE MUPPETS)AND Mickey Rooney with everything culminating in a musicale number with 2000 extras and that shuts down Hollywood Boulevard? You can’t! And how about Chris Cooper singing…rap??
Just what is it that makes THE MUPPETS so magical? For director James Bobin, “It’s because we see a bit of ourselves in the Muppets. They are a group of people who always are hoping for the best. And it’s the kind of optimistic outlook at the world.” For co-writer, Nick Stoller, “There is some indefinable quality to them, which they’re just inherently loveable”. No stranger to THE MUPPETS is producer David Hoberman who was involved in the earlier Muppet films. “One of the beauties of the Muppets and [Jim] Henson and how he created them, was the fact that [Muppets] they are simply accepted in our world as one of us.”
Returning to the big screen and bringing a whole new generation (and all of us older generations as well) a world of love and laughter are Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Animal and the rest of the gang. Joining them are Jason Segel, Amy Adams and a new Muppet, Walter, who is, quite honestly, the real star of the film. (Sorry Miss Piggy!) According to Stoller, “You wanted an entry point [into the film] for people who might not be familiar with the Muppets, and we wanted a super fan. And while Jason and myself are super fans, it seemed appropriate to also have a Muppet who kind of represents the Muppet super fan.”
This go round, the world’s greatest Muppet fan, Walter, is heading to Los Angeles with his brother Gary and Gary’s girlfriend Mary. At the top of the agenda? To visit Muppet Studios! But when our happy trio arrive in Hollywood, disappointment reigns. The studio has shut down. No movies or shows have been made. Filled with cobwebs and rundown, it’s as if all the Muppet magic is gone. Sad but still enthused over seeing the relics of the Muppets better days, Walter accidentally overhears the evil oil baron Tex Richman talking about the studio. He is going to buy it and tear it down in order to drill for oil that was found underneath the property. Tear down Muppet Studios????? No! But to save it will cost $10 million dollars.
With Gary and Mary by his side, Walter knows what he must do. He has to find Kermit and the gang and let them know what’s happening. Surely, they can save the studio!
On finding Kermit, things are just as bleak in his life as they are for the studio. Rambling along alone in a big empty house, Kermit’s only companions these past years have been his memories. Why, he doesn’t even know if the old gang is even still around. Undaunted, Walter convinces Kermit that he must at least try.
Inspired and eager, together, Walter, Kermit, Gary and Mary set out across the country – and the Atlantic Ocean – to round up the old gang in an effort to save Muppet Studios. And just how will they save the studio? Why, putting on a show, of course! And while everyone is trying to save Muppet Studios, Miss Piggy and Mary are lamenting their romantic woes about Kermit and Gary.
Jason Segel and Amy Adams star as Gary and Mary with Chris Cooper easily oozing oil as Tex Richman. And then, of course we have the “real stars” of the film – The Muppets.
Describing Kermit as “the original Tom Hanks [in Toy Story] when you’re a kid or Jimmy Stewart”, Segel couldn’t be more pleased to work with one of his idols. For Kermit, being back on the big screen is almost indescribable. “I just want to say that I’m thrilled always to perform with Miss Piggy. I think we make a great duo.” And what’s it like for newcomer Walter to join THE MUPPETS? ” It’s unbelievable. You know, I keep pinching myself. I have bruises to prove it. This sort of thing doesn’t happen everyday and certainly not to me. It’s just been overwhelming and a real dream come true.” And of course, there’s Miss Piggy who not only wanted a bigger part, but a very strange credit sequence where everyone would be introduced, and then it would say “And Miss Piggy” which would stay on through the entire movie. Ah, those diva demands! But according to Miss Piggy, I did not demand any rewrites. I want to go on the record for that, but that’s probably just because I didn’t really read the script. I would just show up on the set and, you know, people say their lines, and then I say whatever comes into my head.”
Amy Adams is to Disney today what Annette Funicello was in the 50’s and 60’s. Happy, perky, sweet, nice and filled with talent, for Adams this marks a “return to a return to singing and dancing. It was a lot of fun and I got involved because Jason and Kermit sent me a DVD!” An important part of her own childhood, now a mother herself Adams is tickled to be part of THE MUPPETS. “Everyday was sort of me reliving my childhood while I had a child, and that was really, really cool and really special.” Jason Segel is at his affable best and is just as charming, adorable and huggable as the Muppets themselves. He sings and dances and has that “Aw, shucks”, Jimmy Stewart quality that he sees within Kermit. Put Adams and Segel together and we’ve got enough sugar-coated sparkle to cover Candy Cane Lane at Christmas.
But then talk about Chris Cooper! He just blows it out of the water as the evil Tex Richman! According to Segel, “[W]hen Chris Cooper stating rapping and dancing, I privately thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve really tricked everyone’ . . .We’re making a new Muppet movie, and I’ve got an Academy Award winning villain rapping and dancing. It just seemed like this is the craziest thing that’s ever happened”. Kermit describes Cooper as being a “kind of method actor on set. He scared the Bejesus out of me.” Never breaking his character between takes, for Miss Piggy, Cooper came across as being “scary in real life.”
Retaining all the charm, sweetness, kindness, niceness, messaging and effervescent joy that the Muppets have always had, one knows that Jim Henson is undoubtedly looking down from on high beaming from ear to ear!
Directed by James Bobin, THE MUPPETS is co-written by Nick Stoller and Jason Segel, who also stars as Gary. Filled with the charm, innocence, love and laughter that Jim Henson gave us so many years ago, THE MUPPETS never misses a beat and never compromises the integrity of the franchise. As Segel himself admits, “I sort of modeled my career after Kermit and the rest of the Muppets.”
According to Segel, “Coming up with the idea of the movie was actually fairly simple. What do the Muppets do best? They put on a show. So I knew ultimately the movie was going to be about putting on a show. That’s the real spirit of the Muppets. They always had a great villain. So we thought of Tex Richman, the evil oil baron. Then once Chris Cooper came into our minds it was very simple. And then, what occurred to me was that it’s been 12 years since the Muppets were last on the big screen. And I wanted to acknowledge that this movie was bringing them back to the forefront of comedy where they belong. Because they should have been making movies this whole time, grand, big dance movies, song and dance numbers like the old MGM style of musicals. So it was about getting the Muppets back together sort of as a metaphor of getting back onto the big screen where they belong.”
A huge Muppet fan since the beginning of Muppets, Segel admits to the influence each of the earlier films – The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan – each had on THE MUPPETS. “I kind of borrowed one of my favorite jokes from The Great Muppet Caper in terms of, you know, Walter and I are brothers, and we don’t really feel the need to explain it. Just like in that movie they never explained that Kermit and Fozzie Bear were identical twins. Growing up, I thought that was one of the funniest jokes I’d ever heard. And then the idea. . . that they’re putting on a show in The Muppets Take Manhattan. That was part of the putting on a show element. Then the meeting the gang along the way came very much from the original The Muppet Movie. So it really is sort of a mix in paying homage to those three films.”
Beyond the story and the charm and innocence of The Muppets themselves, director James Bobin set, and achieved, a very high bar of excellence, particularly when it came to the challenges of shooting the Muppets and making them real. “My simple rule was that someone had to perform something in front of the camera for it to be the proper shot on my movie because I was very keen to make sure that you had to sense that the puppets were real things you could touch. You could see the texture in their fur. . .The full body shot, to me, is you have to be quite judicious about where you put them in the movie. You felt like after a while, every now and then you should go to one to remind you of how they [Muppets] work, and how they would exist in the real world. . . Obviously, certain scenes lend themselves better to full body shots. Like for example the shot of Walter under the desk. It was one of my favorite shots of the whole movie. And it’s a beautiful thing. He feels completely real, this little kid under the desk and it feels so lovely. Another shot I love is of Scooter sweeping. It just feels again very natural, very real. It doesn’t feel like we put in there to show him full body. He’s just doing his job, but you always see the broom head and his head. So those sort of things feel the best way of doing it like that.” Another concern of Bobin’s was that ” the puppets require a long and lengthy process in the shooting [of a scene].” Producer Todd Lieberman also points that the “ADR that we did at the end of this movie was very useful, too, but it posed its own challenges” given that they had to match voiced add-ins or “punch lines to specific syllable count.”
Also important to Bobin was that he ” had to show [The Muppets] being great.” And, “obviously one of the best ways of doing that is to do The Muppet Show, Muppet Show style sketches.
Notable is the work of Director of Photography Don Burgess who showcases the basic color elements, vibrancy and energy of the Muppets through lighting and some very creative lensing. A real joy is the finale number on Hollywood Boulevard. And kudos to costume designer Rahael Afiley. From the timeless “happy” classics designed for Amy Adams’ to vintage designs for Segel, Afiley left no spool, bolt or bobbin unturned to achieve the right looks. And there was no skimping on Muppet couture by any means! Fabric quality was an essential consideration not only for appearance but maneuverability. One of Miss Piggy’s cashmere jackets was made from fabric that cost $300.00 per yard while designer gowns by Zac Posen and glitter shoes by Christian Louboutin graced our porcine princess. Kermit and Chris Cooper were both dressed in Brooks Brothers, who also outfitted all the men and Muppets in tuxedos for the finale.
Key to the development of THE MUPPETS was the collaboration and involvement of Steve Whitmire and Dave Goelz, original muppeteers from The Muppet Show. Their input was key to Nicker Stoller as “from a script writing standpoint there are a lot of rules of the world that we didn’t understand and that they explained to us.” For McKenzie, Whitmire and Goelz proved invaluable ” because you had the voice of authority and experience.” James Bobin echoes the sentiments. ” They know the characters so well. They know what they’re talking [about] so you listen to them. ” Dave Hoberman is effusive in his praise for the puppeteers, noting that the entire film crew “gained an enormous amount of respect for what [the puppeteers] do, how they do it, their art, their gift, their talent.”
But what would THE MUPPETS be without music! For Kermit, getting a chance to revisit classic songs like Rainbow Connection and the Muppet Theme Song was, “Wonderful. I mean I never stopped singing [Rainbow Connection] in the last 12 years since we did our last movie. It’s wonderful to have the chance to sort of I don’t know, reintroduce that particular song to our new younger audience. I think it’s still quite relevant.” Walter agrees. “I think Mah-Na Mah-Na is as relevant today as it was back then. I mean, talk about inspirational lyrics.”
The entire production team – and cast – agree with Segel that “we wanted a fair amount of nostalgia for our generation who grew up with the Muppets. But we also had to acknowledge that there is a generation of kids who are just being introduced to the Muppets. . . So we have a really healthy mix of old songs, and then new songs written by Bret McKenzie that are, in my opinion, just right in the spirit of the Muppets. So it was a really good union of styles.”
When selecting songs for the film, for director James Bobin there was one obvious choice – Rainbow Connection – “because if you’re going to put Muppets back together again they’ve got to sing that song. According to Bret McKenzie, music supervisor and writer of three new Muppet classics, ” The film had very specific song placement. So I had to write them to fit new characters. In order for a comedy song to work you can’t have too much production in a way, because if it goes too big you lose some of the comedy. So within THE MUPPET film, it gets big but then it also strips right back down.” Thanks to a seamless blend of music and comedy, writer Nick Stoller was then able to use “the music to support the joke or suddenly taking the music away so that the joke hits harder.”
Calling this “the thing I’ve done in my career that I’m most proud of without a doubt”, Segel is opines that “There are a lot of reasons to choose what movie you’re going to do next, and nothing can ever beat doing something that you love.” Clearly, Segel, Adams, Bobin, Stiller, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Walter and everyone involved, loved doing THE MUPPETS.
“Someday we’ll find it. The Rainbow Connection. THE MUPPETS, the dreamers and me!” Find your rainbow connection and make your dreams come true with THE MUPPETS!
And as an added bonus, make sure you see Being Elmo as a companion film. It will enrich your Muppet experience even more.
Gary – Jason Segel
Mary – Amy Adams
Tex Richman – Chris Cooper
Kermit the Frog
Miss Piggy
Walter
Animal
Gonzo the Great
Fozzie Bear
Statler and Waldorf
Swedish Chef
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
Beaker
Sam Eagle
Rowlf the Dog
Scooter
Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Band
Directed by James Bobin. Written by Jason Segel and Nick Stoller.
