Movie review: "Muppets Most Wanted" fails to live up to expectations

             Let me first get out of the way the fact that I haven’t watched much of the Muppets (the last movie I saw was Muppets From Space; make of that what you will). Maybe that makes me somewhat unqualified to review the latest effort from Disney and Jim Henson’s crew, but this latest effort, Muppets Most Wanted, doesn’t quite live up to expectations set by previous efforts, though it does try its hardest and comes close.

            Muppets Most Wanted takes place immediately after its prequel, 2011’s The Muppets. After getting back together after disbanding years ago and bringing a new guy, Walter, in the fold, the Muppets can’t decide what their next show should be. After some failed ideas (two of which reference classic movies like Gone With the Wind and The Seventh Seal, by the way), their tour manager, Dominic Badguy (no, really), suggest a world tour, to which Kermit the Frog agrees. Little do the Muppets that Badguy is actually an accomplice to Constantine, the world’s number one criminal, jewel thief, and an (almost) exact look-alike of Kermit! Their plan is to kidnap Kermit, replace him with Constantine, and use the tour as a cover to steal England’s Crown Jewels! Horrors!!!

            Yep. That’s the story, ladies and gentlemen. A half-baked, emotionally-detached story that doesn’t allow us to connect to these beloved characters or any of the human performers. Fortunately, the plot gleefully pokes fun at itself and parodies generic films so much, you’ll forget about the utterly daffy storyline for just a moment. The movie gets its strongest humor from these bits, such as Badguy kidnapping Kermit…by suggesting Kermit takes a walk down an abandoned alleyway in an industrial setting full of smoke so Constantine can replace him and get him arrested (Badguy even gives Kermit a map!).

The Muppets with Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais).

            Speaking of the human performers, we have three of them: Ricky Gervais as Badguy, Ty Burrell as Jean Pierre Napoleon, a French Interpol detective investigating the thefts with Sam Eagle, and Tina Fey as Nadya, guard of the Siberian Gulag Kermit is sent to. The performers do what they can with the simplistic characters they’re given. Gervais is an unctuously charming jerk as Badguy, while Burrell is pretty silly within his Inspector Clouseau caricature. Tina Fey is certainly funny as Nadya (who has a shrine to Kermit in her office…), though her faux-Russian accent grated on my nerves one too many times. 
            The Muppets have traditionally been known for great musical number, and this movie is no exception. The songs are hilariously written, delightful to listen to, and as silly as befits the Muppets’ nature. Many of them are also just flat-out funny, like Sam Eagle and Inspector Napoleon’s “Interrogation Song” and the opening song, “We’re Doing a Sequel.” The only one that didn’t really work was “The Big House,” sung when Kermit gets to the Gulag. It wasn’t as funny as some of the others, and…well, let’s just say Tina Fey is no Josh Groban.

            Funny enough, it’s the sequel song that kind of catches the heart of the matter. Muppets Most Wanted has humor and fun songs that the only the most curmudgeonly would have a hard time enjoying. It’s just a shame that the whole thing hampered by a notoriously weak script. As the song put it, “everybody knows that the sequel’s never as good.”

Final score: 7 bags of popcorn out of 10. Director: James Bobin. Writers: James Bobin & Nicholas Stoller. Starring: Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey...and the Muppets, of course.