Official Synopsis
Witness the hilarious origins of everyone’s favorite Muppets–Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Animal, and the rest—as they embark on an inspirational and laugh-filled road trip to follow their Hollywood dreams.
How often do you get to see randomly placed plot points all come together with the help of big named stars and puppets? Not often enough. The Muppet Movie is a fun story about a frog wanting to make people happy by singing and performing in Hollywood. Along the way, our main man Kermit runs into several personalities that are common in the muppet universe, including a pig, a bear, a band and a… well, whatever Gonzo is. Sprinkled into these origin meetings is a antagonist named Doc Hopper (parody of Colonel Sanders), who is out to get Kermit to be the face of his frog leg fast food chains, or literally be a part of the menu. Terrifying, funny and just brilliant are a few words to describe this first venture for the muppet crew.
All of this sounds simple in a single paragraph, but understanding how many people love the muppets, and this film in particular, is something to behold. And it couldn’t be done through simple comedy writing, rather it would have to be crafted together to fit all audiences. That’s not an easy task for writers.
Thankfully, Henson and crew had a knack for balancing out the material in films, so that all audiences watching could enjoy and appreciate it. The script and acting was just meant for kids, but also adults. What’s amazing is that all parties involved found the comedy not only understandable, but also genuinely humorous. How many films can snag that type of balance and cater it perfectly to their audience? Pixar is one of the few studios that has done that in recent years. It’s a tough balance to make in a film that is basically made with puppets (muppets). It’s one of the more special elements that not only made The Muppet Show work, but also translated well to the movies that followed it.
Anyway, The Muppet Movie is a brilliant introduction and a great test to see if muppet comedy could survive for an hour and a half. It certainly proved that it’s possible. The decision to make the film an origin movie for the muppets was a great start for Jim Henson’s company. Every great beginning needs an explanation of how things came together, and Henson and crew seemed to waste no time in stretching their creative thinking limits when developing the background for each muppet. Having said that, what I find particularly fascinating about this film is that it mimicked Jim Henson’s own path into industry. Imagine trying to convince studios that puppets onscreen doing comedy bits was a good way to go. Thankfully, someone agreed with him and his muppet legacy lives on.
How do I know it lives on? Well, outside of the whole Sesame Street thing (which is pretty big, you know?), I sat my kids down to watch this with me as I reviewed it, and they found a lot of parts funny (laugh out loud funny). We’re talking about a nearly 35 year old film still touching the funny bones of a new generation of kids. That’s insane, but it’s also a huge compliment to the man who made his dreams come true through a weird idea of making puppet films.
Simply put, The Muppet Movie is a timeless classic.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, it was hit/miss. For the most part, the picture looked really solid. You would get some graininess here and there, but the colors and well-lit scenes really pulled together well in HD. A movie that is nearly 35 years old didn’t look half bad in the HD transfer. The moments where it sorta looked a bit underwhelming were in the studio shots. The lighting wasn’t natural and the colors came off with a lot of artifacts in the picture. For example, the opening scene with the Muppets sitting down in the screening room was a bit rough. As soon as Fozzie and Kermit move to the outside car driving scenes, the picture cleans up tremendously. As a whole, there are a lot more positives than negatives when it comes to the Blu-ray side of things.
Having said that, if you needed a reason to sing with your kids then this Blu-ray is the reason. Packed with a lot of great songs, the Blu-ray converts the original mono track (possibly stereo by 1979) made film into a remastered 5.1 DTS-HD track. In other words, prepare yourself for great audio. Also, the film does come in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
Finally, as for features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Frog-E-Oke Sing-Along
– Jim Frawley’s Extended Camera Test
– Doc Hopper’s Commercial
– Original Trailers
– Pepe Profiles Present Kermit – A Frog’s Life
All of what you get here is brilliant. Quite honestly, they had me at Frog-E-Oke Sing-Along, mainly because I own the 25th Anniversary Soundtrack to the Muppets and most of the songs from the film are on it. Brilliant stuff, though. As for the Extended Camera Test, it’s pretty neat. Seeing that Henson and company usually worked within the confines of a studio, it was neat to see how they tested and handled the outside world with respect to the muppets. They definitely made sure it could work, as they disrupted the world around them (pleasantly, of course). The Doc Hopper’s Commercials are well done (well, at least in the comedy category) as well as the mockumentary of Kermit’s life by Pepe the shrimp. All in all, the features included are very well done and deserve to be on this release.
On a side note, I love what was done with the Blu-ray menus. It was creative and cute, and I hope you enjoy them.
