The Muppet Movie (1979)

In general, I don't like nostalgia.  I lived through the 80s, for example.  I was about 6 when they started and about 16 when they stopped.  They were pleasant enough, I suppose, but I much prefer to live in the now and not salivate over every revived 80s property given a new spin.  The new Thundercats series looks OK, I suppose, but I was never that big a fan of them in the first place, especially when you realize every third episode involves one of the cats needing to rescue the others, often from mind control.  The less said about Transformers on the big screen, the better, and I was a fan of those.  I also have the first movie on DVD, so maybe I am a hypocrite.  The second sucked, though, and I still have not seen the third.

But, dang it all, I still love The Muppets.

Long before Jason Segel thought to revive them in a project that actually felt like a real Muppets movie, indeed, even before he was born, there was The Muppet Movie.  The feature, written by the writers of The Muppet Show captures the pure anarchy of the series well, with all being chaos while a single, forlorn frog tries to hold the whole thing together.  Most, if not all, of the recognizable Muppet characters get at least a small speaking part (including Sesame Street mainstay Big Bird, who's looking to go to New York City and break into public television).

Muppet humor, especially in this, the best of their feature films, takes many forms.  Puns are inevitable, but word play works with these guys.  A small sampler:

Fozzie:  I don't know how to thank you guys!
Kermit:  I don't know why to thank you guys!

That's a basic joke, it works well for the kids, and adults will probably dig it too, though that may come from not seeing just how awful Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem's paint job on Fozzie's uncle's Studebaker went, something that adults might be more inclined to see as something less than desirable.    That the disguise of the car almost works is something else altogether.

Next there's the celebrity cameo.  Some have what I think of as the Muppet cameo, where the famous person turns around and faces the camera for just a second so the audience at home can go, "Hey, it's so-and-so!" and go from there.  Most seem to be having some fun at least (hard to tell with Charles Foster Kane himself at the end), but this is a movie that trots out for at least a minute or so the likes of Dom Deluise, James Coburn, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Eliot Gould, Paul Williams (who also wrote all the songs), Telly Savalas, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (the only ones to play themselves), Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, Milton Berle, and uttering a single line, Orson Welles.  It's somewhat depressing most of these people aren't around any more.

And then, finally, there's the meta-humor, before meta was hip.  The Muppets are watching a movie of themselves, the audience sees them in a viewing room at the movie studio in various bridging scenes, but the movie they're watching has them more or less fully aware they're in a movie and are simply characters in such.  Fozzie's script allows the Electric Mayhem to catch up on the plot, and because he leaves it behind, they can rescue the others when they're stuck in the desert without a ride.

And with all that, you get some good music.  Gonzo of all people (?) gets a rather sad-sounding one about three-quarters of the way through the film, and this is the movie to feature one of the Muppets' signature songs, "Rainbow Connection".

The Muppets' films while Jim Henson still lived were often sweet movies, OK for the whole family, with a lively energy and generally speaking original stories.  When he died and his son took over, the Muppets, when they appeared at all, seemed to be making a new attempt at the old Muppet Show with new characters that people may or may not have cared about (what was up with that Frank Sinatra type with an ape for a manager?), or recasting classic stories with the Muppets themselves.  That never felt right to me, so I've largely avoided those movies.  In the meantime, there's this old chestnut, that still brings out the kid in me.