Trolling #30: The Muppet Movie SUCKS!

A new Muppet feature film is nigh (Muppets Most Wanted hits theaters on Friday), and people the world over are brushing up on their Muppet lore in preparation. They may be discovering that Muppet Treasure Island is great, or reminding themselves that The Great Muppet Caper is not that great. But one thing is for certain: people of all ages are likely using this week to once again get their groove on to Jim Henson’s and James Frawley’s beloved childhood classic The Muppet Movie. The sweet, friendly, good-natured, pure-hearted debut big-screen outing for the beloved Muppets has been a standby for literally generations. It’s not just funny and sweet, but also inspiring and often tear-jerking. There is something so pure and innocent and wacky and fun about The Muppet Movie that everyone I know, without exception, is deeply in love with it.

Which means its time for CraveOnline‘s Trolling to track its big, fat, muddy boots all over it. Over here, it’s our gleefully evil job to tip sacred cows, and few cows (frogs?) seem to be more sacred than The Muppet Movie. So let’s just say it: The movie is overrated. The Muppet Movie is well-remembered, but how does it stand up as a film? Could it actually collapse under the smallest bit of critical scrutiny? Could it be that The Muppet Movie SUCKS? Let’s take a look.  

The film is still sweet, and it can’t be denied that “The Rainbow Connection” is a beautiful song; I still get choked up almost every single time I hear it. But how much of the universal affection for The Muppet Movie stems from nostalgia, and how much stems from its actual quality as a feature film? The feature film is, at the end of the day, a pretty slapdash affair that today feels a bit cheap and corny. And let’s face it: The real thrill of seeing The Muppet Movie is the simple sight of seeing puppets outdoors. That’s pretty much it.

Have I crossed the line yet?

Until next week, let the hate mail flow.  


Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. 

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