Never Seen It #222: Muppets from Space

Looking into my alphabet cereal and it says "watch 400 movies you've never seen before" and I know I'm hallucinating because there shouldn't be any numbers in alphabet cereal.

Muppets from Space

1999

Tim Hill

I'm still not really sure whether my kids appreciate the Muppets or not. We watched Muppets from Space together, but their occasional distraction and disinterest most likely says more about them than the movie, or might say more about the quality of this particular Muppets movie than the whole Muppets enterprise. The whole shtick with the Muppets is that they are doing classic comedy bits—bad puns, pratfalls, that kind of thing—but with puppets, and ostensibly for kids. I have no idea if it translates to the audience of 2025 children. I don't know if it matters. Maybe the comedy of Miss Piggy kicking the shit out of FBI agent Josh Charles is universal, and more than balances out the fact that a lot of the other jokes went over their head

I'm an adult, not a child, and I love the Muppets. I can't say that I've seen everything they've ever been involved in (hence the inclusion of one of their movies on the Never Seen It list), but I've seen enough to know that I love what they are "about." I associate the Muppets with a love of entertainment and art. They are the idea of "doing weird art just to fucking do it" come to life (the term "life" in turn being ironic, since, ya know, they're puppets). The Muppet Movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's about making a movie, and about how a group of misfits came together as a family to make such a movie. If there's magic in the idea of watching movies (or TV, or whatever entertainment the Muppets find themselves stumbling through), then these are the characters that bring that magic to fruition in the purest way.

High-minded thinking for a kids' movie about a goofy blue alien creature finding extraterrestrial messages in his breakfast cereal? Perhaps, perhaps. But the expectations are high to begin with. And the question, when it comes to a late-'90s edition of the Muppets' brand of entertainment, is: does the magic hold up? With Muppets from Space, it's yes and no.

There are two overarching issues I had with Muppets from Space. These are related to my own personal wants and desires when it comes to film, plot, structure, etc., so they may not be problems for you. Nevertheless.

The first one is that there didn't appear to be as much fourth-wall-breaking as there usually is in a Muppet movie. Usually there is some sense that the Muppets know that they are in a movie, or even that they themselves are putting on the movie for our enjoyment. Unless I'm forgetting something, I didn't get that at all from this film, and I think that contributed to a feeling that it was a little "off." The Muppets played it straight. Gonzo wasn't a character this time. He wasn't Charles Dickens. He was just Gonzo, trying to find his place in the world. Which was fine, and occasionally touching, but it lacked that special ingredient that makes Muppet movies so fun.

The second issue I had is definitely a bugaboo that I probably let bother me too much. I even wrote about it last week with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. I just really hate when a character sees something incredible, and other characters accuse him or her of being "crazy." Here, Gonzo starts getting messages from his outer-space family, and all his Muppet pals bust his balls because they think the idea is ludicrous. Eventually, Kermit gives him the benefit of the doubt, but that moment comes way past the point where I was getting annoyed. I was especially annoyed here (as opposed to a 70-year-old sci-fi B movie) because it seems to go against what the Muppets have always been about. As I mentioned above, they are all about the magic, right? They themselves are outcasts, weirdos, and so in my mind it doesn't make sense when one of their own say something weird and is dismissed outright. The Muppets are the ones who should believe Gonzo right from the beginning. Dismissing Gonzo was out of character for everybody.

At least in my opinion. I'm not the Muppet expert, I'm just an admirer. Clearly there was a lot of myth-building in these middle-era years of Muppet movies that I have just straight-up missed, and so maybe my belief that the Muppets are full of optimism and trust and are true believers in magic is an outdated belief by the time 1999 rolls around. Maybe this little shrimp character brought a lot of sarcasm to the proceedings, a character sketched in a boardroom somewhere to address the supposed desire of '90s kids for irony and sarcasm and Mountain Dew-flavored hip cynicism. (I don't know where to ask this, but there was one Muppet I didn't recognize who played up a lot of Black stereotypes, what was up with that?!)

And I certainly don't mean to be cynical in this blog post about a Muppet movie. I'd venture to say that even the worst Muppet movie is worth a watch. I don't think that Muppets from Space was the worst one (I liked it better than The Great Muppet Caper). It was still a movie featuring the Muppets. That opening montage of the Muppets all living together, doing their morning routines to the groove of "Brick House"? That's the shit I watch Muppet movies for. Just goofy-ass fun involving lovable weirdos. I like the idea that Gonzo chooses the Muppets in the end, because I do too.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: We're checking out the classic Easy Rider. I don't usually make any attempts to look up who stars in a movie before I watch it, but this one was unavoidable, due to a song from the great Philly power-pop legends 2nd Grade, "Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider."