Marie Phillips

The other day I tweeted saying that I’d been to see a preview of the new Muppet film and it had moved me to tears. Later I was talking to a friend who saw the tweet and assumed I was joking. In fact no, I wasn’t joking, and neither was the girl I went with who if anything cried more than I did, and nor were probably a fair bit of the rest of the audience, if only I’d thought to get up, shine a torch and have a look around.

The new Muppets film - simply titled The Muppets - is, as you’d expect, fun and funny and madcap and capery. It is also, if you are of a certain age (I’d say approximately 35-45), desperately sad. Gary (Jason Segal) and Walter are brothers, the closest of friends and similar in every way except that Walter is a Muppet. To celebrate their ten year anniversary, Gary takes his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) to LA, and Walter comes along to visit the studio of his beloved Muppet Show. Only the Muppets have disbanded and the studio has fallen into disrepair, and is about to be bought by an evil oil baron. Can Walter get the Muppets back together for one memorial show to save the studio?

That’s the story, anyway. What the film is really about - for we grown-up Muppet fans of yore - is the loss of childhood and of innocence, the way that things which seemed so important when you were a child cease to matter in the cold reality of adult life, and how money trumps art every time. And it’s about how growing up is hard and entails hard choices (see the film’s climactic power ballad ‘Man or Muppet?’). I’m still not joking by the way. This film isn’t really for kids, although kids will love it. It’s for parents who have no idea how they became parents, aside from the obvious stuff they teach you at school (until Nadine Dorries gets her way, anyhow). It is a film that could only have been made by people who truly love Muppets, and can’t believe that the Muppet Show isn’t still on every Saturday night. If you are one of us, and you are not weeping by the time Kermit and Piggy are finally reunited to sing Rainbow Connection, I am in serious doubt as to the validity of your soul.

Anyway, heartache aside, it’s brilliant. It’s got the hands of Flight of the Conchords all over it, a perfect match of lo-fi lovability past and present. James Bobin, the director, directed FotC, and Bret MacKenzie wrote the songs (the Oscar-nominated ‘Man or Muppet?’ is of particular genius, but please don’t look it up before you go - you will spoil the surprise). Crazy fan Mel turns up as Animal’s anger management coach - one of a number of often hilarious cameos which I will also not spoil by listing here. As with Conchords, the humour is gentle but genuine. I love the characteristic periodic knocking down of the fourth wall - (Statler and Waldorf: “That sounds like it’s going to be a really important plot point.” “I hope so, otherwise I’ve just bored the entire audience”). And there is dancing in the street! (In future blogs, I intend to do a series of favourite dancing in the street moments from films. Dancing in the street moments are basically what propels me from liking to loving a film. I am a total sucker for them.)

Here’s the trailer:

Finally a quick shout out to the first ever London Comedy Film Festival who organised the screening and were kind enough to invite me along. Loco exists to shine a spotlight on comedy films (as you might expect) which tend to be overlooked in event season in favour of weighty, serious work. As well as the film festival, they run year-round education programmes for aspiring comedy writers, and as such are a very good thing indeed.