When trying to decide what older movie to pair Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with, I pondered through the possibilities:
Pulp Fiction, my favorite Tarantino movie?
Jackie Brown, the only Tarantino movie I haven’t seen?
The Hateful Eight, the Tarantino movie I most recently watched?
Django Unchained, the Tarantino movie I was most in the mood to rewatch?
Hail Caesar, the Coen brothers movie about Hollywood whose trailer OUATIH’s most reminded me of?
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers movie I’ve been really wanting to watch and which at least ties in to the Western scenes of OUATIH?
Then, just two days before I watched OUATIH, I went to a Fathom Events 40th anniversary screening of the original Muppet movie and thought “Hey, why not? It’s a movie about Hollywood and has a lot of celebrity cameos.”
I’m a huge, huge Muppet fan1. When I visited Seattle in 2017 I actually got to see the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of Popular Culture, and it was a riveting experience seeing the origins of his work dating back to the 50s.
As an adult, when reminded of his programming from my childhood, I wondered why Kermit was the only Muppet featured on Sesame Street. Looking it up on Yahoo Answers, I saw what I should have already realized – Sesame Street debuted first, when asked to create characters for it Henson used the frog who had been his favorite part of his repertoire, and The Muppet Show was almost like a Sesame Street spinoff where that frog got to be surrounded by a bunch of new characters.
Such a wonderful show, which only ended after five seasons because Henson wanted to go out on top, and its popularity led to this big theatrical release which is still justifiably hailed as a classic! It was followed by two movies in the early 1980s, which are also great – The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan. Then came the iconic cartoon Muppet Babies, which us 80s kids will never, ever forget.2 I even had some of their books. There was also A Muppet Family Christmas, the utterly magical TV special that represents the only time The Muppets, the Sesame Street residents, and the Fraggles appeared together.
Of course, then came The Dark Day but Jim Henson would have wanted his characters to live on forever. In the 90s Muppet Christmas Carol deservedly became one of the most beloved holiday movies of all time. Unfortunately, Muppet Treasure Island and Muppets in Space brought diminishing returns, while the show Muppets Tonight was gone faster than you can say “Sheesh”.3
In the early 2000s the folks were reduced to TV movies, including the awful A Very Merry Muppet Christmas, a schmaltzy thing about Christmas letters called Letters From Home or something, and a Wizard of Oz version that even I never saw.
This decade initially brought a new renaissance, thanks to Jason Segel, someone about my age who had also grown up loving the characters. He starred and cowrote a 2011 movie, simply and beautifully called The Muppets, which made $165 million off a $45 million budget and drew raves. Plus, it had The Muppets all over the media again4 and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song!
The renaissance was so short-lived though. 2014’s sequel, Muppets Most Wanted, despite great contributions as usual from Ty Burrell, made only $80 million compared to a $51 million budget, and 2015’s TV show The Muppets, despite a clever mockumentary format and a plot about the gang working on the late-night TV show Miss Piggy hosted, lasted less than a season. The latter got criticized for going with slightly more adult-oriented humor, including the main plot about Kermit and Miss Piggy having broken up. I honestly loved the show (except for the running storyline about Fozzie dating a human woman, and that was dropped anyway) but apparently, I was in the minority.
Still, they may be down but not out. The failure of the TV show demonstrates that kids are an essential part of the gang’s audience and perhaps the 2011 movie didn’t do enough to draw in new child fans. The following year I got my then-10-year-old nephew a poster of Kermit and Robin together, writing “Christmas is a time to celebrate the bond between uncle and nephew.” Yet apparently neither he nor his little sister knew the characters.
There is a current Muppet Babies revival that I hope is leading to many new kids growing up with and loving the characters. As far as their future, there is reportedly going to be a new streaming show on the Disney+ service launching next year! It will take place following the events of The Muppets Take Manhattan, thus showing how the creative minds are embracing the characters’ history.
The Muppets Take Manhattan established as canon that The Muppets knew each other as infants, insofar as it allowed the launching of the original Muppet Babies. However, the main purpose of this post is to discuss The Muppet Movie.
How does it hold up? Magically.
For the most part we’re watching a movie-within-a-movie, as at the beginning the characters are in a theater watching a movie they’ve just made. That movie tells the story of how The Muppets met according to the established canon at that time. Yet Kermit tells Robin as they’re waiting for that movie to start that it’s only loosely based on facts, so I guess what we see isn’t quite canon.
If I’m making your head spin, you should know that it’s a wildly creative movie that is self-referential about itself and Hollywood. Reminds me of Blazing Saddles and other great Mel Brooks movies of the 70s in that regard. Not only that , I feel like its constant barrage of jokes, told with the utmost enthusiasm however silly, helped make it an inspiration for the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies of the 80s. Certainly bears no resemblance to the gross-out comedies of the Farrelly brothers that defined the 90s though; this movie is as wholesome as it gets.
As far as HOW The Muppets met according to the movie-within-the-movie (again, bear with me as I talk about this creative thing), Kermit is living on his home swamp but gets told he has what it takes to make it in Hollywood. He starts riding his bike in that direction, meets Fozzie in a bar, starts riding in Fozzie’s car, and along the way gets joined by Gonzo, Miss Piggy, The Electric Mayhem, etc. However, he also gets pursued by a sleazeball named Doc Hopper who is giving Kermit the option of serving as spokesman for his frogs’ legs restaurant or serving as an entrée.
There’s no movie this side of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off I could more enjoy watching every day. It’s so lighthearted and cheery but so clever and witty that absolutely all ages can love it to pieces.5 And they do – its 40th anniversary wouldn’t have been celebrated by Fathom Events otherwise. Heck, even though it was the middle of a weekday the theater I went to was almost full 😊
Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment.
Bottom line: LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT!
1To the extent that the day I found out Jim Henson died remains one of the saddest of my whole life.
2Today’s my 20-year high school reunion and I remember one time when the co-valedictorian Kelvin, another guy Albert and I were doing a class project together Kelvin for some reason was reminded of the show. He began singing “Muuuupet Babies will make your dreams come true…Muuuupet Babies will do the same for you”. Albert was saying “Okay” and “Shut up!” but I was enjoying the trip down memory lane. As Kelvin continued “When your world looks kind of weird and you wish that you weren’t there, just close your eyes and make believe”, I helped him out when he forgot “As you wiiiiiiish.” He appreciated that and finished off “Muppet, Muppet, Muppeeeet, Babies, Babies, Babieeees”.
3When Muppet Babies was on the air my older sister had a friend names Rasesh (pronounced Rus-eesh). Whenever she mentioned him, I said “Sheesh”. Years later when she found out Kermit would say “Sheesh” and not “Jeez” she said, “So that’s why you used to call Rasesh ‘Sheesh’. I always wondered where that came from.”
4Even on WWE Raw, which you know I appreciate. Check this one clip out, as it also features one of my favorite wrestlers (Christian, NOT Sheamus)
5In my dorm in Berkeley I was having lunch with a guy named Hodad. He who told me, “The honeydew tastes great.” I’d never heard the word before and said, “It all makes sense now! There’s that Muppet Dr. Benson Honeydew. He’s green, and he’s bald, and his head is round!” A little bit later in the meal when he saw I wasn’t paying attention to him, Hodad asked “You’re still thinking about Dr. Benson Honeydew aren’t you? Yeah you are.” I said, “It’s something I’m amazed to find out after so long!” As we were putting our trays away at the end of the meal, “He asked “Are you still a Muppets fan? Yeah you are.” I said, “They’re fun for all ages.” He asked “Really?” I said, “That’s what I’m telling myself.” I was willing to do self-deprecating humor but of course they really are fun for absolutely everybody!
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