REVIEW: Muppets Most Wanted

Courtesy of Disney

2011’s The Muppets was terrific, primarily because star and co-writer Jason Segel’s love for Jim Henson’s creations shone through in every frame. The film did well enough for Disney to greenlight a sequel, with director James Bobin and co-writer Nicholas Stoller collaborating on the screenplay. I was cautiously optimistic, but nervous that Segel wasn’t involved.

Then I saw the trailer. Yikes. My heart sank, but I tried to cheer myself up. The Muppets fan within kept reminding me that Disney’s marketing for Tangled and Frozen was awful, and those movies were excellent. So I walked into Muppets Most Wanted expecting the worst but hoping for the best.

The verdict? It’s somewhere in the middle. Not great by any stretch of the imagination, but not terrible enough to infuriate fans. It’s almost two hours long and the pace is glacial, which will probably bore kids to tears. There are a handful of truly funny jokes for the grown-ups in the audience, but not enough to keep them from zoning out. (I saw numerous adults staring at their phones more than the screen.)

Picking up immediately where the last film left off, Muppets Most Wanted finds the gang embarking on a world tour to take advantage of their rejuvenated popularity. They’re approached by a slimy manager named Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais, essentially playing himself), who promises them instant fame and fortune. In actuality, he’s the sidekick of Constantine, world’s most wanted criminal and Kermit the Frog’s doppelganger, working a scam on the Muppets to help his boss.

Constantine stages an escape from a high-security Siberian gulag, tricks the cops into arresting Kermit and infiltrates himself into the Muppets. While they travel the world performing, Constantine and Dominic rob the world’s most famous museums. Meanwhile, Kermit tries to convince warden Nadya (Tina Fey, with a decent accent) that she’s got the wrong guy. Oh, and Sam Eagle is inexplicably a CIA agent now, partnered with a French investigator (Ty Burrell, doing a pretty solid Inspector Clouseau) to track down the museum thieves.

Look, a Disney flick that drops an Ingmar Bergman reference in the first 10 minutes can’t be all bad, and it’s also fun to see Ray Liotta and Danny Trejo as singing, dancing prisoners. But most of the celebrity cameos come across as tired and mandatory. (Christoph Waltz dances the waltz and Usher plays…wait for it…an usher. Ha ha.)

However, what makes Muppets Most Wanted even slightly enjoyable is the music from Bret McKenzie. The songs are wonderful, representing the only time the movie truly comes alive. If you didn’t need to see the flick to understand their context, I’d just recommend using your ticket money to buy the soundtrack. 

Muppets Most Wanted is rated PG for some mild action.

Grade: C+