Amph The Muppets

Okay, I enjoyed that way more than I thought I would. My immediate reaction was that how could they not just bring back the Muppet Show format again?

Still, it's the Muppets, and I laughed at pretty much all that, so I guess mission accomplished. Some what of a missed opportunity though.

 

Because primetime variety shows have been dead for quite some time.

I'm not a huge fan of the Muppets-- especially not the last two movies-- but I enjoyed the trailer.

 

No doubt there will also be some 'front of house' musical numbers / skits, so best of both worlds. They've hit the humour perfectly in that trailer, I have confidence it will extend to the full shows.

 

The Muppets TV trailer I posted above has bad audio / stuttering. This one is better:

 

Perhaps it will work by bringing back families on television. Let's face it actors and actresses will want to appear on it for free just because they can.

 

25 years gone.

 

That looks like its going to be hilarious.

 

You'll never GUESS what the baby from Labyrinth is doing now!

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/a...s-to-the-magical-world-of-labyrinth-june-2014

 

More here

 

I think The Muppets are more or less dead. Their fans are mostly people who fondly remember watching the show when they were kids. The Muppets, back then, lived in a world which still had echoes of vaudeville, music hall, variety shows, i.e. a pre-television age, and ever since that framework has been gone The Muppets have been adrift. They are stuck in a Seventies' version of the Twenties. The cheesy pianist, the end-of-pier comedian, the smalltown diva, all those characters who are just as desperate to escape the real world as the audience--more so--now are the ghosts that haunt derelict theatres and roam empty halls. New writers and funnymen can try to reinvent the show all they want, but the curtain fell in 1981.

Jim Henson tried different things, new things, and so should the poor souls who are behind this latest incarnation.

Also, people underestimate the dark undertone of the original Muppet Show. Those dark halls backstage: it's where failed artists hanged themselves.

 

There seems to be some darkness in this new season, which is indeed trying new things rather than rehashing a variety show. And the rebooted movie was a success. I know much is mired in nostalgia, and parents dragging along kids to the films. But it is a nice change to take kids to a movie full of puppets and jokes, and not CGI. This franchise has been languishing for a long time, but I think it is again moving in the right direction. Anyway, I guess we will find out on Sept 22.

 

The new Muppets show looks great. It feels a little like "30 Rock", but with beloved established characters. I think this show has a lot of potential and I hope they push the envelope with the writing. It doesn't have to be crude like some episodes of "South Park", but rather a good balance between "Modern Family" and "Family Guy" (back when FG was good like Season 3).

 

My feeling was that it sort of felt like The Looney Tunes Show, but with a more prime time bend to the humor.

 

I can't count the number of people I've talked to who are excited about the new Muppets show. We in the Inty household view it as sort of "The Office", but with Muppets. Which is just about perfect.

I don't see the Muppets as dying because while, yes, they are largely tapping into nostalgia, just like so many other franchises, they do it in a different way.

 

Yeah, the Muppets' humor has a very particular slant, but its one that pretty universally popular and always has been.

 

But that constant reinventing is exactly the sign they are adrift. "They aren't lost, because they keep walking in different directions."

I wish it were different.

 

Expect that the last Muppets series, Muppets Tonight ended in 1998. so there's been a 17 year gap with no Muppets on TV in primetime. The last Muppet movie before The Muppets in 2011, was Muppets in Space, which was released in 1999. Sorry, Debo. the Muppets as a franchise hasn't been re-inventing inself over the past 10-15 years. It's been absent, and I am excited that Muppets are coming back to television.

 

"It's not dead, it just has been absent for 15 years."

Look guys, I hope your expectations are fulfilled. I hope this new show will return them to a kind of former glory, so that future generations will remember it affectionately. I've made my point.

 

We watch "The Muppet Christmas Carol" every year as part of a family tradition that my brother and I started. So for some of us, it hasn't felt absent at all.

 

"Muppets In Space" was the last theatrical film. But it was not the last of the Muppet films. In 2002 there was "Kermit's Swamp Years" and the two TV films released between 2002 and 2005. The films weren't reinventions, but rather continuations of the same themes when Henson was still alive. "The Great Muppet Caper" was presented as a film where everyone meets for the first time, with regular fourth wall breaking acknowledging that they've known each other and that they're making a film. "Muppet Treasure Island", "The Muppet Christmas Carol", "It's A Very Muppet Christmas" and "The Muppet Wizard Of Oz" were all variations on the same theme of having the Muppets integrated into popular films and literature. Stuff that was done in "The Muppet Show", only less of a skit and more of a take on the lore.

Besides, if they weren't popular, Disney wouldn't have invested in them and the 25 million views on Youtube for "Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody" wouldn't have given them the go ahead to make "The Muppets" film.