Kermit: The Comeback Kid

The Muppets are like pizza: When they’re good, they’re amazing, and when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

The Muppets’ new movie falls on the side of amazing, but I’d argue against the critics calling it “the perfect comeback.” They’re the Muppets. They don’t need to come back from anything.

That said, the film is as near perfect as its Rotten Tomatoes rating (97%) would have fans believe. There is a significant lack of Rizzo the Rat, which is jarring for fans of the movies (though he does appear in a couple group shots without any lines), and, of course, the idea of a world in which the Muppets are no longer popular is very hard to believe (the $41.5 million box-office profits for this movie alone speak for themselves). But otherwise, the film is among the Muppets’ best and most memorable works. The jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, the songs manage to stay catchy, heartwarming, and hilarious all at the same time, and it is impossible to leave the theater without singing them again.

Jason Segel shows his work as a long-time fan both as a writer and an actor, and Amy Adams is as adorable as she always is. But the real focus of this film is more on the Muppets themselves than their human companions, dealing with Walter, a Muppet fan destined to become a Muppet himself, bringing the disbanded Muppets to put on one last Muppet Show to save their theater. Concentrating on the Muppets and not the humans was a good move on the writers’ parts (with the possible exception of Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island, who really ever remembers the humans in the Muppet movies?), and really shows how much Jason Segel and the others care about giving the Muppets the “comeback” they deserve.

The question is, what do they plan to do now? The film seems like a perfect lead-in for a new season of The Muppet Show. They now have a new member of the Muppet team, and the film implies outright that the Muppets and the fans (on screen and off) both want the show to come back on the air. With the success of The Muppets, the show would likely be huge with both the audience and the critics. So, Kermit—are you coming back?