Muppets Most Wanted Film Review.Beating up on the Muppets might seem the act of a curmudgeon, but what the hell – the new film isn’t very good. It’s doing poorly at the box office here and in America – of course box office is no guarantee of quality, but this is a justified popular judgement on a pop movie, because sadly the film is barely there.The film is restricted by its two settings – a train journey across Europe and a Gulag in Siberia, where Kermit is trapped, putting on a performance with his fellow prisoners. That could have been a good idea for an episode in a film, but having Kermit incarcerated for more or less the whole playing time, separated from his gang, is deadening. Both settings work to subdue whatever fun is to be had and the whole film is a tad withheld, pulling its punches – and Miss Piggy’s.The extended train journey across Europe, where the Muppets are touring, is part of a plot featuring break-ins to art galleries and museums, which gives the film a old fashioned old world-ness, which lacks energy because the Muppets’ good natured satire is manily absent.Compare this to the gleeful parody of Englishness which was Monsterpiece Theatre, Sesame Street’s very funny take on Masterpiece Theatre, the PBS showcase of ‘quality’ British Television presented by Alistair Cook, (burlesqued by the Cookie monster as ‘Alistair Cookie’.) The whole stuffy venture was joyously sent up, reaching a cheerful deliriousness in the crazed, independently-swivelling, mind-of-their own eyes of ‘Alistair Cookie.’Nothing in Muppets Most wanted has the cheerful satiric lunacy of the Cookie Monster’s eyes. Miss Piggy, whose demonic porcine sex appeal depends on her crazed fury and karate, only gets to cut loose at the end of the film.There are a few other such moments, including an enjoyable opening number about sequels whose self-referentiality manages to be funny, but they mainly belong to the human performers. Ray Liotta is one of the prisoners in Siberia and breaks through the lassitude with his happy comic dementedness. Tina Fey as a Bondesque Russian Commander also has a couple of wonderful bits, where her skilled comic energy cuts loose. There has been criticism of the number of cameos on the film, but really they work as a a relief from the stodginess of the plot and the lameness of the Muppet characterisations. Bizarrely, it feels like the vocal performers were asked to tone down and underplay.The best of the of TV shows had energy and a good-natured antic anarchism – the film is lacking in anything approaching this, as if the film makers were wary that this would be too much to sustain throughout a film – if so, they were wrong. At times, contemporary kids’ entertainment is so hyperbolic it becomes a frenzied commercial bombast – hello Transformers and Miley – but the placidity of this film is no response. Next time needs to be much sharper. See you there, Miss P.Mark Wrigley 2014.
