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MUPPETS IN BOOTS
Feb. 9th, 2012 09:56 pmFilms: I watch them. Etc.
The Muppets
This may be the hardest review I’ve ever had to write, because as a longtime Muppets fan, I really wanted this to be good. And it is good. But not that good.
It’s clearly got its heart in the right place, and is loaded with the kind of wacky humor one associates with Muppets. And the basic premise – the Muppets, split up and forgotten, reunite for a special show to raise enough money to save the Muppet Theatre from being taken over by evil oil baron Tex Richman – is as good a vehicle as any.
The problem is the other story that sets everything in motion – Jason Segal and Amy Adams go to LA for their 10th anniversary and bring along Muppet brother Walter, a lifelong Muppets fan who inadvertently discovers Richman’s evil plan and vows to stop him by getting the Muppets back together. Far too much of the story dwells on the relationship between Segal and Adams, which is tedious, predictable and just gets in the way of the actual Muppet-comeback story.
That doesn’t necessarily offset the rest of the film to the point where I hated it. But as comeback vehicles go, The Muppets had a lot to live up to, and clogging it up with an irrelevant love story diluted the effect for me.
Puss In Boots
And in a twist, this was the film I expected to be the worse of the two, mainly because the Shrek franchise ran itself into the ground at least two films ago. That said, Puss In Boots was the one character that made the sequels worth watching, and the one most likely to carry his own weight in a spin-off. Which he does.
What’s striking is how removed this feels from the Shrek universe. Yes, there’s a fairy tale angle (outlaw Puss gets roped into a plan with former friend Humpty Dumpty to steal magic beans from Jack and Jill to grow a giant beanstalk and steal the goose that lays golden eggs), but the setting and the characters owes more to old Zorro films than they do to Shrek. Also, the Shrek-verse was always more about making fun of Beverly Hills/Hollywood celebrity culture than fairy tales anyway – there’s none of that here (which is fine with me).
Also, you can’t beat Antonio Banderas playing a cat with a cool Spanish accent. Or Salma Hayek as the female equivalent in Kitty Softpaws.
Meow,
This is dF
The Muppets
This may be the hardest review I’ve ever had to write, because as a longtime Muppets fan, I really wanted this to be good. And it is good. But not that good.
It’s clearly got its heart in the right place, and is loaded with the kind of wacky humor one associates with Muppets. And the basic premise – the Muppets, split up and forgotten, reunite for a special show to raise enough money to save the Muppet Theatre from being taken over by evil oil baron Tex Richman – is as good a vehicle as any.
The problem is the other story that sets everything in motion – Jason Segal and Amy Adams go to LA for their 10th anniversary and bring along Muppet brother Walter, a lifelong Muppets fan who inadvertently discovers Richman’s evil plan and vows to stop him by getting the Muppets back together. Far too much of the story dwells on the relationship between Segal and Adams, which is tedious, predictable and just gets in the way of the actual Muppet-comeback story.
That doesn’t necessarily offset the rest of the film to the point where I hated it. But as comeback vehicles go, The Muppets had a lot to live up to, and clogging it up with an irrelevant love story diluted the effect for me.
Puss In Boots
And in a twist, this was the film I expected to be the worse of the two, mainly because the Shrek franchise ran itself into the ground at least two films ago. That said, Puss In Boots was the one character that made the sequels worth watching, and the one most likely to carry his own weight in a spin-off. Which he does.
What’s striking is how removed this feels from the Shrek universe. Yes, there’s a fairy tale angle (outlaw Puss gets roped into a plan with former friend Humpty Dumpty to steal magic beans from Jack and Jill to grow a giant beanstalk and steal the goose that lays golden eggs), but the setting and the characters owes more to old Zorro films than they do to Shrek. Also, the Shrek-verse was always more about making fun of Beverly Hills/Hollywood celebrity culture than fairy tales anyway – there’s none of that here (which is fine with me).
Also, you can’t beat Antonio Banderas playing a cat with a cool Spanish accent. Or Salma Hayek as the female equivalent in Kitty Softpaws.
Meow,
This is dF
