Movie review: The Muppets

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I don't get to the movies nearly as often as I'd like, and 99.9% of the time I do get to the movies, it's to see something that Best Girl wants to see--although to be fair, I usually want to see the same movies! We were lucky enough to get to the movies twice over Thanksgiving weekend, and I absolutely fell in love with both films.

For a review of Hugo, the first movie we saw, click here.

On Black Friday, instead of fighting the shopping crowds, we decided to head out to see The Muppets. Best Girl and I took my mom, nephew (age 4), and niece (almost 3) to the movies--it was the littles' first movie experience! We grabbed our popcorn and settled in. Again, we were early so we had a nice selection of seats (and it was the 11am showing, as well), but the theater got pretty full by the time the movie started.

First of all I have to admit that I grew up with the Muppets. I have vivid memories of me, my little bro, and my parents setting up a card table in the living room on Saturday nights so we could watch The Muppet Show while we ate dinner (and, strangely enough, I remember eating lobster on a lot of those nights). I had (and still have) a Miss Piggy ornament (dated 1980) on my Christmas tree each year; Little Bro has (of course) Kermit. We were young--I was maybe four or five, and Little Bro was only 3 or 4--but those Saturday nights are some of the happiest memories of my early childhood. (Other happy memories revolve around watching Fraggle Rock on HBO; seems that Jim Henson was an integral part of my childhood happiness!) And of course we loved the movies--The Muppet Movie, the original, is still the best, but The Great Muppet Caper is a lesser-known but still fun favorite. The Muppets Take Manhattan is my least favorite of the original trio, but it did introduce us to the Muppet Babies, which is what Littlest Bro grew up watching.

So obviously I'm attached to the Muppets for sentimental reasons, and I've made every effort to get Best Girl to love them, too. She loves the original movies as much as I do, and actually had just rewatched The Muppet Movie the night before our journey to see the newest film.

If you were a fan of the Muppets growing up, like I was, you will absolutely adore this movie. It's old-school Muppets all the way. You've got the corny jokes, you've got the random celebrity cameos (Mickey Rooney  and Neil Patrick Harris were favorites, as was John Krasinski--especially because both Amy Adams and Rashida Jones, who are both in The Muppets, played John's love interests on The Office. Yeah, my mind works like that.), you've got the singing and the dancing. Amy Adams is one of new favorite actors--she is just so much fun and you can tell that she really loves what she's doing. I'm a little less enamored of Jason Segel--something about him just doesn't sit well with me. But, I totally get that he co-wrote the movie, so, OK. He just seemed a little bit stiff in the role.

Of course Best Girl loved the film, although she wasn't welling up with sentimental tears the whole time, like I was :) It ran a little bit long for Niece (who fell asleep in my lap) and Nephew (who started to get antsy about 20 minutes before the movie ended), but they enjoyed the movie as well as they could. We all loved the Toy Story short at the beginning, too (and yes, I teared up seeing Buzz and Woody again. I am a sniveling mess when it comes to anything remotely sentimental).

I can't wait for The Muppets to come out on DVD, because I know there are tons of little things that I missed during the first viewing. This movie is one that can be loved by children of all ages!

Enjoy your reading (and viewing)!
Christi