“We’re sorry, Kermit. We’re sorry we didn’t notice you were missing. We’re sorry we didn’t tell you often enough how much you mean to all of us. We’re sorry we ever took you for granted. But, that’s never going to happen again… Kermit, we convinced ourselves that evil frog was you because he gave us what we thought we wanted. When what we really wanted… What we really needed… Was you, Kermit. The actual, real you.”
After The Muppets, I was fully prepared to eat my own shoes instead of watch this movie. My only motivation was the light at the end of the tunnel. Much like the Genie at the end of Aladdin, I would have fulfilled my end of the bargain and finally be freed from having to watch any more Muppet movies ever again. But something unlikely happened… They began The Muppets Most Wanted admitting their fans at the end of The Muppets were paid extras. They were transparent about a sequel being a not-as-good cash grab. The opening number was referential to the original sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, but the lyrics were self-aware, self-deprecating and peak Muppet.
I’ll even go on record as liking this movie a great deal. I was able to forgive the product placement, the obligatory Disney references, the pop songs, and the 7000 cameos because this movie felt like… an apology? Like they had watched the last movie and realized it was hollow, and the spirit of Kermit was steamrolled by their desperation to emotionally connect to the audience.
True to Muppet fashion, their opening number states the stakes of the movie, Ricky Gervais (…ugh) approaches The Muppets with the idea of managing them during a World Tour. Kermit, being a level-headed frog, is hesitant to sign with someone named Dominic Badguy, and doesn’t want to rush into something new without establishing a proper show beforehand. Striking while the iron is hot with your new IP is not enough of a reason to rush out a project.
Kermit is eventually persuaded to hire Dominic, but books a series of smaller venues to ease them into the swing of things.
“Yeah, or is that the suggestion box?”
The Muppets are disappointed by this, and are easily swayed by Dominic to bet big and rent extremely large venues under the assumption they will sell out their shows and make the money back. Kermit is against this at first (voting for “just giving up” instead of “believing in themselves”), but he goes along with the group because he was outnumbered. The content of the show is also a point of contention, as Kermit suggests they play to their strengths, because if the show isn’t successful, they might not have jobs after the tour. This concern is also brushed off, as Dominic tells Gonzo sure, bulls running around the stage sounds like a great idea, the magnetic bomb-attractor vest will be a useful invention, and Miss Piggy should be singing 4 or 5 Celine Dion classics a night.
While Kermit is disappointed, Dominic tells him to take a walk in East Berlin to clear his mind. We soon discover this is a setup to kidnap Kermit and send him to a Siberian Gulag so Dominic and the The Most Dangerous Frog in the World can schedule The Muppets to perform in venues directly next to museums that hold clues and trinkets that will assist them in stealing the Crown Jewels.
Much like The Great Muppet Caper, this movie revolves around case of mistaken identity between bad frog Constantine and good frog Kermit, with their only differentiating feature being a mole on Constantine’s face. After Kermit is kidnapped, Constantine assumes his identity, and although Constantine has a Russian accent and speaks in Muppet one-liners, he’s covered his mole in green grease paint, so the cast has no idea anything is amiss.
As artifacts go missing, Sam Eagle from the CIA and Jean Pierre Napoleon from Interpol are on the case! They dislike each other at first, as everything Sam Eagle does is comically overstated and American, while everything Jean Pierre does is comically understated and European. They gradually come to respect each other, connect the dots, and determine The Muppets… are too stupid to perform a series of heists.
Meanwhile, Kermit is having a hard time acclimating to prison life. Nadja, the prison warden, played Tina Fey (with a really terrible accent, which I can’t tell is supposed to be terrible as a gag, or it just is?) thwarts all his attempts to escape. Kermit grows to accept he is stuck in the Gulag and his friends are not going to come and rescue him. To distract him, Nadja puts him in charge of the annual lighthearted “Gulag Review”, and Kermit’s practice with wrangling the Muppets make him perfect for the job of wrangling hardened criminals, like The Prison King (Jemaine Clement), Big Papa (Ray Liotta) and Danny Trejo (Danny Trejo).
Walter is suspicious something strange is going on with their tour, because he seems to be the only Muppet with critical thinking skills. He shadows Dominic and finds him bribing Robert Crawley to post good reviews of “The Muppet Show” and pay people to put butts in seats. When Walter informs Fozzie, he laments they didn’t think of doing that before, but when Walter suggests that Constantine may have replaced Kermit…
They strike out to find Kermit so he can restore order to this entire debacle, but he’s now neck deep in “Gulag Review” rehearsals. Even when his friends show up and convince him he needs to leave, Nadja is hesitant to let him go because she’s formed a mild attachment to him.
They stage a breakout during one of the “Gulag Review” musical numbers, which just happens to be about working in a coal mine, equip with pick axes that dig everyone out of the prison and to safety.
While they were gone, Miss Piggy begins to suspect something is off with “Kermit”, especially since he seemed OK with Fozzie and Walter leaving the show. In an attempt to pacify her, “Kermit” escalates his affection toward her until it, of course, all culminates in a wedding between Bad Frog and Miss Piggy, even though the last time the Real Kermit spoke with her, they got in a massive fight about her obsession with planning a wedding when he hadn’t even proposed yet. “Kermit” also books The Tower of London as the wedding venue, so Dominic can use the artifacts they’ve stolen to steal the Crown Jewels while everyone else is distracted.
The wedding does not go as planned, though, as Good Frog Kermit shows up and prevents Miss Piggy from marrying the wrong guy. Upon being found out, Constantine decides to drop one more Muppet one-liner before blowing the place to smithereens. Much like Chekhov’s gun, Professor Honeydew’s magnetic bomb-attractor vest aids the Muppets in discovering that Miss Piggy’s engagement ring IS the bomb, and Beaker, who is wearing the vest, is launched out the window, saving The Muppets and all their wedding guests.
Dominic and Constantine try to get away in a helicopter, but Piggy kicks the shit out of Constantine, because again, Piggy’s violence solves every problem in the Muppet universe. With the bad guys captured, the Muppets apologize to Kermit for ignoring his concerns about the tour, and not noticing he was gone. The decide to continue the tour, but first, they will play the Siberian Gulag as a favor to Nadja.
And the big climax at the end… fireworks. In the shape of the Muppets.
The original songs are excellent again, because Bret McKenzie is excellent. They do have a few non-original songs, but they aid the plot this time instead of just being included for whatever fucking reason (with one notable exception, as there is no excuse for “Moves like Jagger”). The Gulag review auditions used these the best, because seeing a prison full of men sing “End of the Road” is fairly comical, and is only topped by a complete reenactment of A Chorus Line’s “I Hope I Get It”, including a costume change that involves “Gulag” crop-tops.
The best hybrid of pop references and original jams is “Something So Right”, which actually made me cry, until Celine Dion appeared and hammed it up. Her diva energy in this movie was just perfect – I loved seeing her and Miss Piggy belt out a song while Rowlf was playing a grand piano.
Speaking of cameos, I feel like they service the movie a lot better than The Muppets. Everyone outside of the celebrity guests on the tour were playing some sort of part, instead of just showing up and answering a phone and talking about how famous they are. Josh Groban sang from inside a metal box several times, and you only see his face for maybe 2 seconds at the end of the movie, which make it clear he just wanted to be involved. Seeing Ray Liotta and Danny Trejo singing and dancing so earnestly made me roll my eyes again at the thought of Sarah Silverman handing Amy Adams a menu and Selena Gomez telling Kermit doesn’t even know who the Muppets are.
The guests on stage were utilized well, with Christoph Waltz dancing the waltz in Berlin, Saoirse Ronan dancing a ballet in Dublin, and Salma Hayek, who is famously Mexican, getting run over by bulls in Madrid. At least the Macarena is from Spain… lord help them.
The Muppet spirit of Muppets Most Wanted is so drastically different than The Muppets to me, and I’m trying to pinpoint why that is. Perhaps it was shifting the focus to the Muppets themselves in the story instead of attention being pulled to Walter and his brother and his brother’s girlfriend’s story arc. Or maybe it was because the plot of this movie was referential to the previous Muppet movies, instead of reusing sections of the plot of the older movies to fill out the runtime. Or maybe it was because this movie was fun, instead of the miserable time everyone in The Muppets was having, feeling crushed under the weight of their potential failure. Or maybe it was because they didn’t end this movie hoisting the Walt Disney puppet over their shoulders while an entire street of people cheer on their new corporate overlord. Whatever it is, this movie is leaps and bounds better than the other.
This concludes Muppet Week! I have consumed more Muppet content in the last few months than I have in my entire life. The Muppets are cherished for a reason, with their ability to ride the line between comedy and emotional sincerity. Their film catalog has increasingly skewed more family-friendly as time has gone on, and they certainly have leaned more toward comedy instead of Gonzo quietly singing about dreams on the side of the road. I haven’t watched either reboot television show yet, and I need a break from Muppet content for a while, so I’ll hold off on my opinions there. But, I love The Muppets, and I hope Disney continues to honor Jim Henson’s legacy with their work.
And with that, I’ll leave you with Kermit and Dolly Parton singing “Everyday People” on The Dolly Show, because I so badly wanted to include this somewhere and didn’t have the opportunity. Also this.