By Zachary Gelman
Returning to New York City for the winter holidays means receiving the amenities that every real city should have (and that Pittsburgh doesn’t). For instance, NYC has so many movie theaters that Magic Johnson — 1977’s Mr. Basketball of Michigan — owns one. (Pittsburgh has so few movie theaters that when you search up “movie theater” on Google Maps, the app gets confused and starts putting pins on UPMC locations.) I took advantage of NYC’s glut of theaters to attend a 40th anniversary showing of “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” screened in a cozy little theater miles away from my house that was still accessible through the wonders of the city’s world-class subway system and my brother’s school-provided MetroCard.
Despite being a Muppet movie, the feature is all about the titular Muppets trying to bring a musical to Broadway — this musical they performed at the human college for humans that they attended for four years. This is a Nostradamus-level prediction about the state of movie financing. Nowadays, movie theaters only make money on concessions. We’re at the point where if you buy a ticket for “Saltburn” or whatever other Hollywood garbage that’s out in theaters, and you don’t spend $16.50 on popcorn and a drink, you’re stealing from AMC. Of course, this theater was no AMC. But I’m no Muppet Theresa, so I brought popcorn from home. If they’d had the heirloom Muppet popcorn bucket I may have been swayed, but alas.
As the theater showed previews for “Argylle,” I heard a very happy Gen X couple ahead of me discuss the most trite of all Muppet observations: their belief that Muppet movies are at their best with just one human. I’d have preferred that they just Pee-Wee Herman-ed instead. You’ll hear them say such clever things as “they should remake “Scarface” with all muppets except for Tony Montana,” or “they should remake Gandhi with all muppets except for Gandhi.”
“The Muppets Take Manhattan,” which shall henceforth forever be referred to as TMTM, shows why these fairweather Muppet “fans” are so wrong. I’d be bitter that people so boring can find love, but these people presumably have to go to work every morning, and I’m unemployed and spend my free time writing about the Muppets.
TMTM starts with beautiful New York cityscape shots and the dulcet tones of Kermit The Frog Jim Henson-ing the “Together Again” melody, before we are brought to the fictional Danhurst College where The Muppets perform their musical “Manhattan Melodies.” The Oppenheimer-esque shots capture a ravenous college crowd clapping. The Muppets attending college get the mind racing with possibilities. I can see Kermit joining a capella, Scooter nerdily getting a 4.0, I’d assume Gonzo joined AEPi, Rolf is a dog. “Together Again” is obviously a classic (and later reused in the maligned “Muppets Most Wanted”), but the rest of this construction is paper thin.
The end product of this film is probably the most alike “The Muppet Show” out of any of these movies, for better and for worse. For better, we get scenes like the one of Miss Piggy “borrowing” roller skates and chasing a purse thief. The directing lends a frantic energy to an action setpiece in a part of the film that is otherwise a bit dull. And we get the great line “Keep the skates, I never use them anyway. I just like to run around in shorts.” These are five minutes that would work great devoid of context as a segment in an episode of “The Muppet Show,” and pretty much have no context in the actual film, existing only to clumsily reconnect Miss Piggy and Kermit.
This is the “for worse” part: Most individual scenes work great (other than some songs that overstay their welcome) but we are lacking a plot akin to the first movie that helps the vignettes flow together.
Speaking of vignettes, I need to mention the iconic “I’m Gonna Always Love You” scene, better known as the origin of the Muppet babies. Immensely cute, immensely catchy, and the concept of Muppet Babies has only ever made sense in this specific context. Otherwise, I don’t like the Muppets being babies at all. It just feels demeaning to make the all-star cast of thespians pretend to be infants.
In addition to Kermit, Rowlf, Ernie, and the rest of the gang, we get Jim Henson (killed by Disney), Frank Oz (director and Yoda), and the rest of the Muppeteers. And we get great cameos ranging from Elliot Gould (great actor) to Ed Koch (actual NYC mayor), from John Landis (killed three people in 1982) to Liza Minelli (Liza Minelli). “The Muppet Show” wasn’t just about the Muppets, but also about their interactions with the human guest stars. So while we do get copious laughs from Kermit’s incredibly expressive face, and we see his pathos when he’s betrothed to a Miss Piggy double his size, watching Rizzo argue with random humans or Animal assault a criminal Broadway producer is where the magic truly happens. And I didn’t even mention the Kermit “Mad Men” plot line!
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