Posted: Friday, March 21, 2014, 12:16 AM
ABOUT an hour into 'Muppets Most Wanted,' just about the time you think its morphed into a bad 'Bond' movie, up pops a muppet with a set of metal jaws.
A la Richard Kiel in 'The Spy Who Loved Me,' the umpteenth spy movie referenced in the latest Muppet caper, which follows the Bourne-again gang on a world tour that a crook (Ricky Gervais) and a Soviet Kermit look-a-like are using as a front for a series of jewel heists.
The tour takes them to Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and London (almost as if Disney is mechanically expanding the brand's global footprint), larded with cameos by Christoph Waltz, Salma Hayek, Saoirse Ronan and, in England . . . Usher? (Waltz's appearance will sorely test the recent habit of the motion picture academy to give him a best supporting actor award for anything he does.)
There's more - Tina Fey plays a Russian warden, Ty Burrell does a Clouseau imitation and makes 153 jokes about how the French like long lunches and long vacations, none of them very funny.
But that's sort of the Muppets M.O. - awful jokes, followed by another joke about how awful the jokes are, though you couldn't prove it by the woman who sat behind me, shrieking with laughter at every gag.
OK, so many of the jokes are lame, and that's expected. More disappointing were the Bret McKenzie songs, a cut below his Oscar-winning work in the 2011 reboot, which included the hilarious 'Am I a Man or a Muppet?' (BTW, his 'Flight of the Conchords' co-star, Jemaine Clement, has one of the many cameos).
The movie is clean, it's Disney wholesome, it's family friendly, but it's also a musical, and half an hour after the movie ended, I couldn't remember a single line from a single tune.
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Posted by Unknown on Friday, March 21, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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