Review: The Muppets (2011)

On Thursday night, I attended an advance screening of “The Muppets”, which is the Stallone-esque title of the new film starring The Muppets and their infinitely-growing list of celebrity friends.

I’ve been anticipating this film for a long time. I’m an almost-lifelong fan of the Muppets, and yet I’ve never seen one of their movies in a theater (though I have rewatched their classic films MANY times, loving each one more each time I watch it). I also greatly enjoy Flight of the Conchords and most of the works of Jason Segel. I tried to be cautious with my optimism, but every new bit of information just made me more and more excited for the film until I had it built up in my head as not only the greatest movie ever made, but also the cure to twelve known diseases and six unknown.

So I went into this film attempting to suppress my excitement, but not so much that I would have a bad attitude that would taint my perception of the movie, so I wanted to leave just enough optimism that I noticed the goodness of the film, but not so much that I ignored any room for improvement. And I wanted to have fun.

Man, watching movies is stressful.

In the end? The film was quite good. Not perfect by any means, but easily the best Muppets flick since “The Muppet Christmas Carol”, which until now went unchallenged as the best of the post-Henson era. Continue reading