Jack Warden -- Silver Emulsion Film Reviews

Ed (1996)

Starring Matt LeBlanc, Jack Warden, Jayne Brook, Bill Cobbs, Jim Caviezel, Valente Rodriguez

Directed by Bill Couturié

Expectations: Low.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

It’s that time of year when the sluggers and the slingers come out of the dugout to play the great game of baseball. But Ed isn’t so much a celebration of this time of year, instead it pays homage more so to the time-honored traditions of fart jokes and slapstick humor. Not that it does either of those especially well, although I will confess that I chuckled rather heartily when Ed farted so boisterously that he literally launched himself off the couch a good six or so inches. What can I say? The kid inside me lives on.

You might wonder why out of all the many baseball movies under the sun I chose this one. I could go on for a little while explaining the minutia of why, but I’ll cut to the chase: it has a monkey. Going in, I thought it was a real monkey, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a guy in a suit/animatronics. Y’see, a totally fake monkey in the role of Ed allows the filmmakers greater freedom to create wild monkey hijinks on-screen. To be honest, they could’ve done a lot better in this regard, but I can’t deny that the film was entertaining enough and the monkey provided a few good laughs (most notably when he drives a drunk Matt LeBlanc home, all captured in near-psychedelic fast motion as the chimp goes wild in the driver’s seat).

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.