The Muppets

“Life’s a happy song,” sing a bright-eyed Jason Segel and his Muppet brother Walter in the unashamedly joyous opening musical number of Disney’s “The Muppets.” And indeed, “The Muppets” is a happy film, perpetually happy in fact, and it doesn’t care who knows it. It’s bright, it’s colourful, it’s silly and it’s sweet, all in a way that calls to mind the ever-beloved “Muppets Show” that was transmitted onto TV screens all the way back in the mid-‘70s. Here is a film so exuberantly fun and endearingly cheerful that to nitpick away at its occasional faults seems a wholly pointless task.

Directed by “The Flight of the Conchords” co-creator James Bobin, “The Muppets” works essentially as a revamp of the Muppets brand, as well as a comeback for Kermit and pals. Created of course by the late great Jim Henson, the Muppets haven’t appeared on the big screen since 1999, the year that their sixth film, “Muppets from Space,” was released in theatres. Since then, they’ve done two television films – 2002’s “It’s a Very Merry Muppets Christmas Movie” and 2005’s “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz” – and sadly not much else of note.

This is reflected in the film itself; at the film’s beginning, the Muppets are all washed-up and long-forgotten by the general public. They’ve drifted far away from the spotlight in which they once shone bright, and have also drifted apart as a group, all having gone their separate ways. In fact, there seem to be only two people in the whole wide world who still remember and still adore the Muppets: brothers Gary (Jason Segel, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” in human form) and Walter (a Muppet voiced by Peter Linz) from Smalltown; question not how these two can be genetic brothers – it somehow makes perfect sense within the context of the film.

Along with Gary’s long-time girlfriend Mary (the delightful, though underused Amy Adams, “Enchanted”), the two Muppet-worshiping brothers go on a vacation to Los Angeles for two reasons: one, to celebrate Gary and Mary’s ten-year anniversary; and two, to take a tour round the grand old Muppet Theatre, which Walter in particular is over the moon about. However, once they get to the theatre, which is now all dusty and derelict, Walter discovers something horrible: Tex Richman (a tremendously hammy Chris Cooper, “The Company Men”), a mean and nasty corporate businessman, wishes to purchase the theatre, knock it down and drill for oil that lies underneath.

Mortified, Walter goes to see his hero, Kermit the Frog (voiced by Steve Whitmire), at his mansion and explains the situation to him: that if Kermit doesn’t somehow raise $10 million, Richman will have the theatre completely destroyed. Kermit, Walter, Gary and Mary then hatch a plan together to raise the money: getting the old Muppet team back together again and performing a show – but will they be able to find all of the ex-Muppets and convince them to do the show? Oh who am I kidding, of course they do.

Yes, all of your favourite Muppet characters are here to help you raise your hands in the air and surrender to sweet, beautiful nostalgia; I won’t list them all (there are far too many to mention), but the obvious highlights are the gloriously glamorous Miss Piggy (voiced by Eric Jacobson), dodgy stand-up comic Fozzie Bear (also Jacobson), psychopathic drummer Animal (Jacobson again), droopy-nosed goof Gonzo (voiced by Dave Goelz) and everyone’s favourite zinger-spouting critics, Statler (Whitmire) and Waldorf (Goelz).

They and their many Muppet co-stars are all wonderfully Muppeteered by the incredibly talented voice actors, who wring both comedy and sentimentality out of the widely adored characters. Writers Segel and Nicholas Stoller clearly understand what makes these characters tick and what it is that fans love about them, and at no point do they betray this for the sake of pointless modernisation; the Muppets have not been twisted and tarnished by modern-day Hollywood – they’re just as wild, crazy and boundlessly charming as they always have been, free of snarkiness and full of good old lovability.

This is old-fashioned, song and dance, variety show Muppets; indeed, there’s a fair share of toe-tapping, head-nodding, memory-imprinting musical numbers, as supervised by Bret McKenzie of “Flight of the Conchords” fame and performed by both the Muppets themselves and the human performers. We have the aforementioned opener, “Life’s a Happy Song,” the wryly funny and genuinely poignant (and now Oscar-nominated) power ballad “Man or Muppet,” and also a hilariously abrupt sing-along rap by Chris Cooper; that’d be fun to see being performed at the Oscar ceremony. We also have a whole boatload of cameos from a few familiar faces, the identities of which I would never dream of revealing; that of course would only spoil the pleasure of the many surprises held within.

“The Muppets” is a family film in the purest sense of the term; it is a film for youngsters, for teenagers, for parents and for grandparents. Regardless of your age, “The Muppets” will not fail to raise a smile, tickle a funny bone or warm the heart. It is gleefully anarchic, infinitely energetic, riotously nutty, enormously entertaining, magnificently self-referential and utterly riveting; it is a glorious comeback for a timeless creation that will delight loyal fans and enthral newcomers. Simply put, it’s phenomenal. Do doo be-do-do…

9/10