Review of The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) by Brandon K — 08 Mar 2012

The last Muppet film that Jim Henson was involved in is sadly not one of the best. It has a very different feel from the first 2 movies. Part of this is because they made the poor decision to eliminate the idea of Muppets breaking the fourth wall. This was, without question, one of the best aspects of the Muppet movies. I miss it tremendously here, but that doesn't mean the movie was a complete bust. I actually like it a lot, but it doesn't quite measure up to the standard they set in The Muppet Movie and Great Muppet Caper.

The story is definitely a fun one. Letting the gang leave to pursue job opportunities is fun. It opens up the door for some really entertaining short segments of them working. The cameos are still great in this movie, particularly Dabney Coleman and Joan Rivers. The lead human characters, Jenny and Ronnie, are a little too sweet. However Pete is a comedic bright spot, with his unintelligible fortune cookie wisdom. The Muppets, of course, continue to have great comedy timing and delivery. It's especially nice to finally see Rizzo get a more prominent role.

The story is just a little too emotional. It's like they wanted to focus more on young kids, so they made a movie that would appeal to a child's mentality. However the songs are still quite good and very catchy. I'm really of two minds about this movie, because it has positives and negatives. While I love all things Muppet, I just don't feel like this is their strongest performance. Of course this movie gets a slightly higher rating from me for the brief Muppet Babies scene. When your movie inspires a great cartoon, you've done something right. In the end I have to call Muppets Take Manhattan a good movie, where its predecessors we're great.