Walter (voiced by Peter Linz) and Gary (Jason Segel) are two very different brothers. Gary is a normal human being, while Walter looks more like one of the Muppets the two used to watch on TV as kids. When Gary and Mary (Amy Adams), Gary’s girlfriend of 10 years, surprise Walter with an extra ticket for their trip to LA, Walter dreams of meeting the Muppets and being asked to join them in their antics. When Walter overhears an oil magnate’s plan to purchase the old Muppet Theater and destroy it to drill into a rich oil deposit beneath it, Walter convinces Gary and Mary to help him find the Muppets, bring them back together, and find a way to save the Muppet Theater.
We can disagree on whether Gary, Mary, and Walter are the main characters of The Muppets but there’s not much room to debate whether or not they are enjoyable characters. None of them have much of a personality and that bugs me. Gary and Walter are both big Muppet fans living quaint lives in the fictional Smalltown. They seem too wholesome to be real, almost like what the Muppets were played up to be like in The Muppet Movie. But that’s the problem- Muppets stand out from the real world; humans aren’t supposed to. As a Muppet, Walter isn’t even that unique. He just looks like a Muppet version of a kid. Maybe he’ll come into his own in future films. Mary is just as equally 50s-esque innocent as Gary but at least her character understands more about the way things work.
In the original Muppet trilogy, there is no consistency to the origins of the Muppets as an entertaining group, so you can’t really knock The Muppets for recycling the ‘get the gang back together’ plot from The Muppets Take Manhattan. This time around, however, the gang are all washed up has-beens who have moved on with life after stardom. Naturally, none of the Muppets show any sign of aging but it is fun to watch them shake of the rust and band together from all sorts of interesting places.
Once we actually get around to re-assembling the original troupe, this film does get better and is quite satisfying. The problem is that we grow impatient for our dose of nostalgia as the filmmakers make us wait through the wind-up. I can see why the filmmakers decided to create a new Muppet to bring about this grand reunion. The Muppets have fallen out of relevance over the last decade or two, so to deny that would be dishonest. I still think it takes too long to get to the point though.
I can’t tell if The Muppets was necessary. Sure, it reminds us that the Muppets are great family fun but it also calls to memory just how much better they were back in the day. It’s fresh enough to keep the kids interested and nostalgic enough to do the same for adults. It’s a safe, harmless movie but it’s also not likely to make the Muppets matter again for very long.
RATING: 3.25 out of 5
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