D: James Bobin
W: James Bobin, Nicholas Stoller
S: Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey.
The Muppets return, with director James Bobin again, in the sequel to 2011's The Muppets. This time around The Muppets go on a world tour helped by their new manager Dominic Badguy (played by Ricky Gervais) who turns out to be a thief who switches out Kermit the Frog (performed by Steve Whitmire) for his partner in crime, world's most dangerous criminal, and Kermit lookalike, Constantine (performed by Matt Vogel). Will Dominic and Constantine get away with it? Will Kermit be rescued from the Siberian Gulag he has wrongly been sent to? Will Gonzo get to perform his indoor running of the bulls?
I've been a massive fan of the Jim Henson as far as I can remember. I've enjoyed nearly EVERY Muppet film at some extent... except for maybe The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984, Dir. Frank Oz) and Muppets from Space (1999, Dir. Tim Hill). I've enjoyed his specials and even his non-Muppet related films and projects. Especially The Dark Crystal (1985, Dir. Jim Henson & Frank Oz). I unfortunately didn't get a chance to see the 2011 film because of personal issues at the time, and I unfortunately still haven't. So I made myself promise that I was not going to miss seeing this film and that I will see the 2011 film some time soon.
I had a smile on face from beginning to end with this film. There were so many funny gags, great musical numbers and nearly every great Muppet trope appears in this film. I could not have been more satisfied. I think one of the reasons I really enjoyed this film was that it shared a lot of similarities with my favorite Muppet film The Great Muppet Caper (1981, Dir. Jim Henson). It involves villains planning a series of heists (switch out the Baseball Diamond with the Crown Jewels), one of the Muppets getting wrongly accused (switch out Miss Piggy with Kermit in this case) and plenty of the greats gags.
I know talking about what makes comedy good is really hard to do but trust me folks, if you love the style of humor from other Muppet movies then you'll love this film as well.
The one thing I do know of about the 2011 picture is that it had a fantastic with songs written by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Concords fame. Including the Oscar winning "Man or Muppet". McKenzie returns again to write the songs and he did a great song. My favorite song on the listing would have to be "We're Doing a Sequel" because it reminded me of the instrumentation of song bits from The Muppet Show and the opening number of The Great Muppet Caper. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ip4rfxii3U).
Of course like any Muppet film you get to play the fun game "Spot the Cameo". And this film has tremendous amount. I'm not the biggest fan of Ricky Gervais but he was spot on in this film. Modern Family's Ty Burrell is comedic gold as the Interpol office Jean Pierre Napoleon who partners with Sam the American Eagle (performed by Eric Jacobson), and Tina Fey is of course funny and charming as the Russian Gulag prison guard. Also among the crowd of cameos include a cavalcade of criminals in the Gulag played by Jermaine Clement (the other half of Flight of the Concords), Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo and many others. Special spotlight on Josh Groban cameo as "Maximum Security Prisoner". Whether you like his music or not there's no doubt that Groban has an amazing sense of humor. And yes ladies Tom Hiddleston is in it as well, as the prisoner "Escapo". I'll admit I got a kick our of James McAvoy's brief cameo... but that's probably because I'm just a big fan of him. There are too many to count and are fun to point out and find on your own.
Of course no film is perfect and it does have flaws. Thankfully it's nothing tremendous or distracting. It's mostly just some less than subpar CGI work and... the character Walter (performed by Peter Linz). Yeah, I know he's meant to be an everyman... er... everyMuppet, but he's just sort of bland in my eyes. Maybe he's more interesting in the other film.
But never the less, I can't recommend this film enough. It is a true delight and I'm it'll warm your heart with Muppet joy.
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