The Mouse Minute (Formerly Brad's Everything Disney Blog): The Muppets Most Wanted 2014 7+ out of 10 (Disney Family Film #1)

The Muppets Most Wanted 2014 7+ out of 10

The Muppets are back in action again. I love the Muppets and will watch any new Muppet movie that comes out. I grew up with the Muppet Show on TV, so the nostalgia is very strong for these characters. The original Muppet movie was a classic and I love visiting the Muppets 3-D film at Disney’s California Adventure. So I didn’t complain when I got the duty of taking the kids to the movies.

The Plot

I was a little disappointed in the previous Muppet movie for basically having the same plot as The Country Bears movie and for spending too much time on the new character of Walter. This Muppet movie gets all of the classic Muppets much more involved in a story where Domenic Badguy (played by the always entertaining Ricky Gervais) convinces the Muppets to go on a world tour. Kermit is kidnapped by the World’s Most Dangerous Frog Constantine and thrown into a Serbian jail. Contstantine replaces Kermit unconvincingly to everyone except the clueless Muppets and then proceeds to rob museums with Domenic Badguy. It is a good plot that only suffers slightly from the fact that Kermit is separated from the main group of Muppets for most of the film.

The Music

One great thing about this latest Muppet movie is that once again the songs are written by Brett Mackenzie of Flight of the Chonchords –so all of the songs have that fun and clever feel of a Flight of the Chonchords song. The song “You can you what you want “ as sung by the World’s Most Dangerous Frog Constantine was especially entertaining . The tone of these songs is perfect for the Muppets and their style of humor.

What is missing?

I ended up seeing the Muppets in the theaters twice, only because the kids had different events on different days so I got movie duty. It didn’t hold up as well the second time around. I’m not sure exactly what was missing that made me disconnect while viewing the film a second time. Many of their adventures seem to fall into the same general range of being good and yet not great and I think that is where this Muppet film will fall. Maybe it is just the nature of there being puppets in the first place that keeps them from achieving true greatness, I’m not quite sure and I can’t quite figure it out. Maybe they just work better in small doses or in a TV show format with short sketches instead of getting lost within a Hollywood plot that always seems to water down the Muppets from their best.

Anyway….If you like the Muppets –you will probably like this Muppet adventure as well. It is good –just not great.