Disney's "Muppets Most Wanted" takes the entire Muppets gang on a global tour, selling out grand theaters in some of Europe's most exciting destinations, including Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and London. But mayhem follows the Muppets overseas, as they find themselves unwittingly entangled in an international crime caper headed by Constantine-the World's Number One Criminal and a dead ringer for Kermit the Frog-and his dastardly sidekick Dominic, aka Number Two, portrayed by Ricky Gervais. The film
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Sunday 30 March 2014 Link to video: Muppets Most Wanted: watch Ricky Gervais in the trailer for Kermit and the gang's new film After the tidal wave of love that greeted 2011's The Muppets, it seemed inevitable that a sequel ("technically our seventh" as Dr Bunsen Honeydew points out) would disappoint. The Bret McKenzie-penned opening song grabs the bull by the horns, gaily admitting that "everybody knows that the sequel's never quite as good" but insisting that "the studio wants more, while they wait for Tom Hanks to make Toy Story 4!"
Muppets Most Wanted Production year: 2013 Cast: Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, Tom Hiddleston More on this film And despite Disney's dismay at a softer-than-expected US opening ("definitely disappointing" said distribution head Dave Hollis), Muppets Most Wanted succeeds in delivering a consistent stream of daft in-jokes, comedy Russian accents ("I yam Kyermit thee fryoggg…"), knockabout routines, and top-notch celebrity cameos (Christoph Waltz performing… a waltz!), all strung around a knowingly hackneyed globe-trotting caper narrative. While this may lack the emotional clout of The Muppets star/co-writer Jason Segel's original reboot (leading man Ricky Gervais doesn't really do feelings), it doesn't skimp on good old-fashioned variety entertainment. The bizarre (and unforeseeable) topicality of putting on a show in a Siberian gulag overseen by a trench-coated Tina Fey merely adds to the air of surreal anarchy. Ignore Statler and Waldorf, and just enjoy.
The plot, in which Kermit is kidnapped by his doppelgänger Constantine during a Muppet tour of Europe, riffs on the caper movies of the Sixties and Seventies, and particularly the Pink Panther films — as did The Great Muppet Caper in 1981, which struck the perfect balance of farce, pastiche and gentle surrealism.
Of course, that film benefited from the presence of Charles Grodin, who played a suave international jewel thief and heaved every line to the back row of the stalls like a champion shot-putter. Here, the human co-star is Ricky Gervais, who by contrast burns through just enough energy to send a biscuit wrapper halfway to the nearest waste paper bin.
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Gervais plays Dominic Badguy, Constantine’s second-in-command, but his screen persona, all arch muttering and shifty grins, jars catastrophically with the film’s otherwise hopeful, frolicky spirit. His big cabaret song, 'I’m Number One’, has a weird, synthetic quality, as if it were a live projection of Gervais’s bad dream. (In fact, depressingly few of the songs hit their mark: Bret McKenzie, who wrote the soundtrack, comes up with nothing here to match Life’s a Happy Song, or Man or Muppet, and a Miss Piggy-Celine Dion duet achieves exactly four per cent of that double-act’s comic potential.)
Other players have mixed fortunes: Ty Burrell, from the American sitcom Modern Family, fares pretty well as a Clouseau-esque Interpol agent, but Tina Fey, playing a Gulag commandant, gropes around for punchlines that aren’t there, and a near-endless stream of cameos drifts between funny and wearing.
What heightens your disappointment is the input of so many of the people who made the last Muppets film such a barrage of fun: not only McKenzie but also the director, James Bobin, and its co-writer, Nicholas Stoller.
For me, the last straw was a depressing new trick: digitally augmented shots of the Muppets running and jumping around, without a convenient table or waist-height wall in sight. That doesn’t compound the Muppet magic, it erodes it. The music is played and the lights are lit, but it feels like nobody’s home.
The plot, in which Kermit is kidnapped by his doppelgänger Constantine during a Muppet tour of Europe, riffs on the caper movies of the Sixties and Seventies, and particularly the Pink Panther films — as did The Great Muppet Caper in 1981, which struck the perfect balance of farce, pastiche and gentle surrealism.
Of course, that film benefited from the presence of Charles Grodin, who played a suave international jewel thief and heaved every line to the back row of the stalls like a champion shot-putter. Here, the human co-star is Ricky Gervais, who by contrast burns through just enough energy to send a biscuit wrapper halfway to the nearest waste paper bin.
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