Review of The Great Muppet Caper (1981) by Edith N — 30 Mar 2008

I did [i]Muppets Take Manhattan[/i] and the first two seasons of [i]The Muppet Show[/i] already. Somehow, I neglected the first Muppet movie--[i]The Muppet Movie[/i]--and we just got [i]The Great Muppet Caper[/i] yesterday. I think this will make me stop buying [i]Muppets Take Manhattan[/i]. We decided, Moses and I, that the reasoning in my head was that I owned two of them, and I needed the third. Ergo, I needed the movie that was made third, so I've actually bought [i]The Muppets Take Manhattan[/i] a couple of times and just barely stopped myself from buying it more often than that. Probably a dozen times, all told.

The first one, of course, is sort of approximately how the Muppets actually got together. Kermit leaves the swamp on the advice of Dom DeLuise, a Hollywood agent. He joins up with Fozzie, meets the Electric Mayhem, joins up with Gonzo and Camilla, Miss Piggy, Rowlf, the Electric Mayhem, and Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker. He evades Doc Hopper (Charles Durning) and his pathetic assistant, Max (Austin Pendleton)--one of two characters named Max whom I can think of off the top of my head, and both are pathetic assistants. Make of that what you will. Eventually, they encounter Lew Lord (named after Lord Lew Grade, who essentially gave the Muppets their chance), played by Orson Welles, and sign the "standard Rich and Famous Contract.".

Of course, we throw that all out for the second movie, because, after all, it's the Muppets playing characters. We are so far out, here, that Kermit and Fozzie are supposed to be twins. In an effort to redeem themselves in the eyes of their newspaper publisher-boss (Jack Warden), they and Gonzo, their photographer, take off to London to find out what has happened to Lady Holiday's (Diana Rigg's) jewels. Of course, they've been stolen by her brother, Nicky (Charles Grodin). He is also planning, along with three of Lady Holiday's models, to steal The Fabulous Baseball Diamond. This eventually leads to the best part of the movie, the battle between thieves and Muppets. No doubt about who wins.

But that is the best part of the second movie. It isn't very good, you see. Oh, it certainly isn't bad. And it does have that great sequence at the end--and the hilarious exchange between Peter Ustinov and Oscar the Grouch. It is also the reason [i]Muppets from Space[/i] annoys the bejeezus out of me. Gonzo is a "whatever." It says so on his crate. An alien? Pfft. That's too easy.

The first one, on the other hand, is one of the best family movies ever made. And it is, unlike a lot of things we encounter around here, a [i]family[/i] movie. There's Steve Martin, of course. The finest wine of Idaho. There's Mel Brooks, whom I don't actually like very much but who is good here. Orson Welles himself, of course--the irony of his playing a studio exec was lost on neither Henson nor Welles, I'm quite certain. It was lost on me when I was a child, but I get it now. And then there is the final performance of Edgar Bergen, a man spoiled by doing ventriloquism on the radio.

Season Three comes out in a little over a month. We'll get to that. There's a lot coming up, actually. I should have the complete series of [i]Twin Peaks[/i] soon. I need to go back to working my way through [i]Remington Steele[/i], and you'll be getting that. I'm hoping to get my hands on season one of [i]The Tudors[/i]. I'm working my way through [i]Rocky & Bullwinkle[/i] on Netflix. And, of course, there's the stacks and stacks--I have estimated that it will probably turn out to be literally a ton--of library movies in our future. It's not going to stop being difficult to keep up with my reviews any time soon, kids.