Kids

The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Charles Grodin, Diana Rigg, John Cleese, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, Jack Warden, Steve Whitmire

Directed by Jim Henson

Expectations: High. This was always my favorite Muppet movie as a kid.

While The Muppet Movie brought your favorite puppets to the big screen, it was lacking in one major area: plot. I don’t mean this as a knock, the road adventure works well for that film, but The Great Muppet Caper does a great job being its own thing and providing a completely different experience than that original film. So where The Muppet Movie was a string of random events with a shoestring plot, The Great Muppet Caper is almost entirely plot.

Kermit and Fozzie play investigative journalists recently employed by the Daily Chronicle. They’re sent on assignment to London to interview Lady Holiday about her stolen diamonds, but due to a mix-up Kermit thinks Miss Piggy is Lady Holiday. It’s a mystery, it’s a love story, it’s a rollicking good comedy; The Great Muppet Caper is full of life. It’s been almost 20 years since I last watched this, but I saw it so many times in my youth that I was still able to sing along to many of the songs and I remembered large sections of the film shot by shot, and joke by joke. While that might work against some films, it only enriched the experience of re-watching The Great Muppet Caper for me; I was in Muppet heaven.

The Muppet Movie (1979)

Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, Charles Durning, Austin Pendleton

Directed by James Frawley

Expectations: High. Hopefully my loving memories of this, brought to the surface by watching the new one, will hold up.

After watching the recent Muppets revival film, I kept turning over my memories of watching the old gang throughout my youth. I could have been the main character in that film, full of nothing but love and admiration for my felt-skinned friends. The Muppets meant more to me than they probably should have, and this deep love of the characters made watching The Muppets something of a strange affair. As time went on afterwards I kept wondering if maybe I was misremembering the old trilogy of my youth, so as any good movie reviewin’ webmaster should, I decided that a series re-watch was in order. And as soon as The Muppet Movie began, I was greeted with that old feeling that I knew and loved. It wasn’t just a case of remembering wrong, the old ones clearly have the juice the newest film does not.

The Muppet Movie seeks to tell the origin story of how all our friends originally got together… or something like that. The film starts with the Muppets all gathered in a movie theater, waiting to watch The Muppet Movie. Kermit’s pint-sized nephew asks him, just as the film begins, if this is really how everyone got together. Kermit replies that it’s basically how it went down, signaling that while it’ll take us on an adventure, it’s not necessarily going to be one rooted in reality. This is a fantasy, or more accurately a dream, given to us through the eyes of a charming frog with a desire to make the world happy. Kermit’s big dreams inform the entire film, as well as teaching some great, moral lessons to children along the way.

Green Lantern (2011)

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Tim Robbins, Jay O. Sanders, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Clarke Duncan, Clancy Brown

Directed by Martin Campbell

Expectations: None, except that I expect to have some fun with it.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

As I like to do at the beginning of reviews, I’ll just cut to the big question looming in your mind: Yes, I enjoyed Green Lantern. Feel free to move along if that’s what you came to find out, but if you’d like to know why, there’s plenty of that to follow. I don’t think Green Lantern is a particularly good movie, but I think it tells a hard tale well, what with all the wild, intergalactic struggles of the Green Lantern corp and everything. I read a lot of comics in my youth, but I never read a Green Lantern tale, and outside of his appearance in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Back, I don’t know that I’ve ever been exposed to him in any real way. DC has always been a major blind spot for me, and this puts me in a very interesting place to see Green Lantern. Instead of approaching the film as a seasoned vet, I’m actually coming at this one as a standard mainstream moviegoer, and within the opening minutes I was already completely lost… but that’s OK.

During these opening minutes there were a lot of crazy, intergalactic visuals and narration explaining who and what the Green Lantern corp was. As soon as they started dropping alien names I was lost because they held no weight to me, but the sheer draw of the sci-fi visuals captured me completely in a child-like way. Then three aliens fell down a hole and found an even crazier looking alien who opened his mouth in a wide scream and gold tentacles came out of his mouth. I was sold. When I decided to watch Green Lantern, it wasn’t because I thought it would be good, it was because I thought it would provide me with a lot of B-Movie thrills. And this yell was exactly that. If this moment had come even five minutes later, it might have been too late and I’d have given up hope, but it came at just the right time.

The Muppets (2011)

Starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Peter Linz

Directed by James Bobin

Expectations: High. Muppets were my thing as a kid.

OK, this review could very easily slip into a 1200 word rant on why this is a disingenuous attempt at bringing back the Muppets, characters I’ve loved for as long as I can remember. These guys are in my soul, from Sesame Street to Fraggle Rock to the Muppets proper. When I heard Disney was producing a new, old-school Muppets movie, I became instantly excited. Star and screenwriter Jason Segal assured everyone that it was his passion, and that no one would be disappointed. On one hand, they’ve totally pulled it off: The Muppets is a fun, lighthearted movie for the whole family. But on the other hand, for hardcore fans of Jim Henson’s work and the three original Muppet films, there’s a distinct difference in the quality of the end results.

The Muppets is essentially a remake of The Blues Brothers, with the Muppet Theater in jeopardy from an evil oil baron and Kermit forced to get the band back together for one big fundraisin’ show of a lifetime. Before we get to Kermit and the rest of the gang, though, we’re introduced to Gary and Walter. Gary is a human (played by Jason Segal) and Walter is a puppet. They’re brothers and no one ever mentions how or why he has a puppet for a brother. Walter does notice the difference, though, and feels like an outcast until he discovers the Muppets. While Walter is ultimately a good addition to the cast, he is also part of the problem.

Batman & Robin (1997)

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, John Glover, Elle Macpherson, Vivica A. Fox, Vendela Kirsebom, Elizabeth Sanders, Jeep Swenson

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Expectations: High, but also incredibly low. I’ve been looking forward to watching this one a lot.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate different things. Philosophy, screaming into a pillow, and shitty movies all spring to mind initially, and while I’d love to say that Batman & Robin brings all three of these pastimes together, alas it only touches on the final entry. So yes, Batman & Robin is a shitty movie, let’s just get that out of the way. You agree, I agree, we all agree… but what I’m here to tell you today is that Batman & Robin rises above its inherent shittiness to create a very over-the-top, very comic book film. Looking back on this initial series of Batman films, it’s clear they are simply big-budget versions of the campy Adam West TV show, and this is never more clear than in Batman & Robin.

Where this quality is somewhat subdued or obscured in previous Batman films (especially Burton’s), Batman & Robin presents itself immediately as the trashy film it knows itself to be. Most other shitty movies would make you sit through 90 minutes of mediocre, trying plot until you get to that realization, so you should only be blaming yourself for your bad Batman & Robin experiences. Anyway, it opens with a “suiting up” montage complete with close-ups of Bat-Asses and Bat-Crotches, and then proceeds into a lengthy intro battle with Mr. Freeze where our caped crusaders eventually hit buttons on their utility belts that make ice skating blades pop out of their boots, which of course leads to Robin playing hockey with Freeze’s minions. The action quickly moves into space (yes, space, as in no one can hear you scream) and we’re treated to a very James Bond style intro complete with Batman & Robin surfing down from space on the exploded doors of the space pod’s escape hatches. After a scene like that, how can anyone but a 12-year-old boy take this shit seriously? Yet there are numerous serious reviews of this film floating around. Lighten up, punks, this one is directed strictly at the fun-lovers, just like the Batman of yore.

Batman Forever (1995)

Starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Drew Barrymore, Debi Mazar, Elizabeth Sanders, Rene Auberjonois

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Expectations: High, but guarded. I was all about this shit in the 90s, but times have changed.

If I went into re-watching Tim Burton’s 1989 version of Batman with trepidation, then I pushed play on Batman Forever with abject terror. I was thoroughly obsessed with this film from the moment I saw it in the theater until a few years later. I bought the VHS the day it came out and watched it whenever I could get the chance. It had dropped during my (and the world’s) love affair with Jim Carrey, so how could I not love it? Anyway, that kind of love doesn’t generally translate well to adulthood, but I’m here to tell you that Batman Forever holds up admirably, for me anyway. It appealed to the wild sense of fun that I love to see films embrace, and while it definitely treads in over-the-top territory, it’s a sugary sweet, neon-tinged version of over-the-top that goes down just right.

After the debacle that was the story of Batman Returns, the general framework of Batman returns and provides us with something of a tried and true formula, but turned up a notch at every available opportunity. Now instead of the hot blonde seducing Bruce Wayne, she’s falling for both Wayne and Batman, creating something of a love triangle that mindfucks Bruce into rethinking his life. Two-Face is creating a menace in Gotham (no word on if he was also drinking his juice in the hood), and Edward Nygma quickly turns insane and starts dropping riddles after a failed conversation with his idol Bruce Wayne. The game is afoot, and all that…

The Shrunken City (1998)

The Shrunken City (1998)
AKA Shandar: The Shrunken City

Starring Michael Malota, Agnes Bruckner, Jules Mandel, Steve Valentine, Ray Laska, Dorina Lazar, Christopher Landry, Lula Malota, Andreea Macelaru, Ion Haiduc

Directed by Ted Nicolaou

Expectations: Moderate, the kids movies are always iffy.

On the general scale:

On the B-Movie scale:

I’ve put off writing this review for the last hour or so after the movie had ended. Usually I start right away, eager to blast out my thoughts into some form of a rough draft. Whenever I hesitate, it’s usually a bad sign. In this particular case, it’s a sign of a film that has left me rather indifferent, but I’ll try to make the best of it. It’s odd too, because I enjoyed The Shrunken City, or Shandar – The Shrunken City! if you’re going by its most recent title (and what it’s known by at a Redbox near you).

Shandar is about the mystical city of Shandar that was shrunken into a glass bottle as a last-ditch effort to save it from the destructive forces of the evil Ood. As a sidenote, has there ever been a shittier name for a villainous force? The Ood? I suppose I could call them the El Ooderino, but they’re obviously into the whole brevity thing so I won’t. Anyway, the city is shrunken and then 26,000 years and a dimensional journey later, it is unearthed by our 13-year-old heroes, George and Lori. The only problem is that by unearthing it, they have also broken its protective shield and now the Ood are back to finally wipe out that pesky city of Shandar. Boy, these guys really know how to hold a grudge. You’d think after 26,000 years they’d let it go.