Muppets Most Wanted

[TitusTodd]

I definitely hope Muppets Most Wanted is better than the last one which was dullsville. I rented it on Blu-Ray to introduce Muppets to my kids. Now they don't want anything to do with Muppets. From the previews I have to say this one looks more like what a Muppets movie should be.

[Randall]

And my daughter called the last Muppet movie her favorite movie ever. Maybe your kids just don't like the Muppets.

Of course, the last film was more of a re-introduction than an introduction. My daughter had already watched 3 seasons of The Muppet Show, so she was primed.

In truth, I found the last one a little maudlin at times, though not boring. This new one does look a little zippier.

[Randall]

Discussion on this one petered out, but I finally got around to watching this, a year after my kids had already seen it.

I LOVED it! It may be my second or third most favourite Muppet movie, in fact. I found it quite hilarious. The plot was good fun, Constantine was a hoot, and I really enjoyed most of the songs, even if no new classics emerged. Ty Burrell was, I thought, quite brilliant, exposing comic chops I didn't quite know he had (having had limited exposure to his work before, though he was fine as Peabody last year). Gervais pretty much kept up, in a less silly way. All of the stars really seemed game to have fun. (Fey was good too, of course, but more Salma Hayek would have been great!) And so many of the gags cracked me up. The "fourth wall" gag was great, though I had to pause the film and explain to the kids why I was giggling. Great use of Animal, nice on-the-nose comments by under-utilized Rizzo, and a cool little arc for Kermie and Piggy. Really, I loved just about everything about this film. It had a great balance between plot, songs, jokes, heart, and even some action. I was impressed, and I'm sorry that it took me sooooo incredibly long to get around to seeing it. This should have been a bigger hit.

[ShyViolet]

Never got around to watching this either, but very glad to hear how good it is! . Will hopefully be watching it soon. (Still love the Sequel Song, and watch it regularly on my YouTube vids list!)

[Dacey]

Disney timed the releases of both Muppet movies pretty poorly in hindsight. The original had a chance to be a breakout hit, but competed against a truckload of films including Happy Feet 2, Hugo, Arthur Christmas, and Twilight. Sticking with the original Christmas Day release probably would've been smarter.

In the case of Most Wanted, they were counting on adult fans to show up by default and bring their kids, but didn't count on Peabody and Sherman (wrongly cited as a "bomb" by most sites) playing as strongly as it did, and even Disney's own Frozen (four months after its release!) was still playing in theaters and taking space away from Kermit.

[EricJ]

In the case of Most Wanted, they were counting on adult fans to show up by default and bring their kids, but didn't count on Peabody and Sherman (wrongly cited as a "bomb" by most sites) playing as strongly as it did, and even Disney's own Frozen (four months after its release!) was still playing in theaters and taking space away from Kermit.

Also, the first movie was pretty much a "pilgrimage", with fans prepared to forgive any corny, smug or even heretical gags so long as, oh joy and rapture, we had our dearly favorite childhood-nostalgia characters back again.
Okay, we got that all out of our system, and we did the big Oscar Song stunt--But whatever was left of that act of fan-religion pretty much all transferred itself over to the Lego Movie, and the sequel was just sort of stuck out there after the fact thinking they'd get the same love and attention if they did another smugsy-facetious self-aware fourth-wall song. By the time the sequel got here, WOW, was it over.
(And I'm not even going to go into a whole Muppet-expert rant about how we're supposed to know Constantine isn't Kermit because of the weird finger-scrunched way the performer moves his mouth, and which doesn't work since it's really no different from that weird way they're all doing it these days...)

Basically, imagine if we got a Simpsons Movie 2 and it bombed in theaters, leaving everyone asking "...Gee, what happened? "

[Dacey]

Seriously, Statler and Waldorf might be asking you to tone it down a notch at this point.

[Randall]

Well, Eric is a bit right, at that. The sequel just wasn't as anticipated or popular, for some reason. And I admit that I was less excited to see Most Wanted in the theatre than the previous one (which I did run out to see, with my two kids, and my daughter's friend), as yes... the excitement level had evaporated. Disney just failed to generate any excitement over Most Wanted. But the truth is, I loved the sequel more than the first one.

[Ben]

You mean the seventh, right?

As Bunsen says, MMW is technically the "seventh sequel to our original motion picture".

[Randall]

Yep. Too many to count at this point. Easier to think in reboot terms. (Even if the term doesn't fully apply.)

[EricJ]

(Although I tend not to count Muppet Wizard of Oz, since that was originally supposed to be a Disney TV-movie musical of The Wiz, but the trend fell through, and they had to think of some in-house way to fix it at the last minute...)

[Ben]

Muppet Oz is not counted in their theatrical feature line-up.