Review of Muppets Most Wanted (2014) by Nmuntz — 01 Apr 2015

Oh gosh, I was so ready to like this movie after the latest Muppet reboot, which was fun and funny and highly likeable even with a super weak villain at its heart. But soon after I sat down I knew it was not to be.

I sat down with some food I needed to pack and freeze, and I knew the movie was in trouble when I started being more interested in getting the portions correct than in what was going on in the movie.

I wish I could say the worst thing I found about this movie was, again, the lack of a really good villain, but quite honestly what finally lost me was the gulag bit. I mean... okay, it's not in the memory of most kids of the target age for this movie but good god, if you've ever read about the gulags.

.. why not just slap Tina Fey and Kermit down in the middle of a concentration camp and have them do a musical trio with Anne Frank? I just found it highly uncomfortable to watch, and as there are several gulag-related scenes, it never really got better.

As well, the national stereotypes... I mean, it's not even that they're necessarily super offensive or anything, but they're *so* very, very, very, very, VERY very old. And the movie is drowning in them.

Anyway, I could go on, but the short version is: nobody had any chemistry with anyone, the villains were weaker than the last one, there wasn't one catchy song in the whole movie (an unforgivable crime in a muppet movie), and the comedy was a bizarre mix of "for the adults" (ha ha, look at Kermit spoofing Silence of the Lambs!) and "for the kids" (Poopieville! Ha ha ha! (Or whatever the name was.

I'm not going back to check, and you can't make me.