ARGO: This is the Best Bad Idea We’ve Got

Argo (2012) – Directed by Ben Affleck – Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Clea DuVall, Kyle Chandler, Tate Donovan, Michael Parks, Richard Kind, Titus Welliver, Rory Cochrane, Bob Gunton, Zeljko Ivanek, Philip Baker Hall, and Adrienne Barbeau.

Why is it ARGO gets Oscar talk yet The Avengers doesn’t?

I’m being purposely obtuse, of course. I know darn well why Avengers doesn’t get any Oscar talk, but I raise the issue to once again bash on awards shows. The Oscars is supposed to represent the best in cinema, is it not? Both ARGO and Avengers are incredibly well made movies with incredibly smart scripts, fantastic directing, great acting … yet ARGO will get Oscar buzz and Avengers will have to settle for being the third highest grossing movie of all time. It reasons like this why I don’t bother with the Oscars, as they are more politically and PR-driven than an actual award of filmmaking merit.

All of that is prelude to my reaction to ARGO, a darn good movie from the engaging directing hands of Ben Affleck. I was prepared for ARGO to be a solid drama, but I was not prepared for it to be funny.

ARGO is a very funny movie, however, chiefly through the first half of the movie before settling in for a tense, suspense-filled second half. It’s a smart decision, as it’s the first half of the movie where ARGO stands out from other political thrillers. Set during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis, ARGO tells the based-on-true-life tale of how CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) extracted six American diplomats from the Canadian Embassy in Tehran. Mendez’s plan to get them out is to create cover identities for the diplomats as a film crew for an in-production science fiction film.

There are a myriads of problems with this plan, not the least of which is that it depends on putting a fake science fiction film into production in order to fool the Iranian security forces who are scouring Iran to take any stray Americans hostage. The film gets its biggest laughs from the discomfort this plan raises in the Washington bureaucrats and the open-minded embrace from Mendez’s two Hollywood partners, make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin). Goodman and Arkin are fantastic together, with Chambers’ enthusiasm balanced perfectly by Siegel’s calmer demeanor.

The Washington/Hollywood split shows an interesting approach to casting in ARGO. The Washington scenes are quick-hitting, with plenty of known actors playing bureaucrats. Kyle Chandler, Titus Welliver, Bob Gunton, and Philip Baker Hall appear in a scene or two or three to question Mendez’s plan. None of these actors are playing characters as much as they are united in a kind of Gestalt of Dissent. Their job is to act incredulous, doubt Mendez’s plan, and make the CIA look smarter. In Hollywood, Chambers and Siegel become actual characters, allowing Goodman and Arkin to develop a wonderful chemistry in their shared effort to assist Mendez.

Affleck does a wonderful job contrasting the deadly seriousness of the hostages with the absurdity of creating the fake movie. While I’m sure it would have looked incredibly bad if the news got out that the CIA was in Hollywood getting Adrienne Barbeau to sign on for a movie they didn’t intend to make, it’s great fun for us and a smart creative decision to balance off the heaviness of the situation in Iran. Or worse, that they were putting on an elaborate reading of the movie for the press, with actors in full costume, just to try and get a notice in Variety in order to fool the Iranians. It’s a bit of weird world that we live in, of course, that sees us paying money to eat popcorn to see a story that exists because hostages were taken, but this is part of the way we cope with the hardships endured by previous generations.

Chambers and Siegel display a very cinematic attitude towards the plan, which is to say, that despite the gravity of the situation half a world away, they seem to enjoy playing junior spies. Chambers has a quip for every situation, and Siegel has a laid back, dry sense of humor. Both of these approaches allow Affleck to play Mendez as a rather boring dude. He’s serious about his work (which he needs to be), and Affleck sees no reason to give Mendez a bunch of over-inflated histrionics to make himself stand out. It’s a very understated performance, which allows his few fireworks moments to have a greater impact.

As I mentioned, it’s this first half of the film where ARGO stands out from other political thrillers. The back half is solidly put together and delivers a fair amount of tension, but it’s nothing that you can’t find in a whole host of other movies. Once Mendez hits Iran, ARGO is simply an extraction movie. To go back to the Avengers comparison, that script is much more complicated than this script, yet both of them do exactly what their respective movies need. The back-half of ARGO doesn’t need to be complicated because we’re already invested in the story. Really, the big star of the back half of the film isn’t Mendez or the hostages, but Bryan Cranston’s Jack O’Donnell.

O’Donnell is Mendez’s supervisor and at the start of the film he brings Mendez into a meeting wit the State Department, but encourages him to not get involved. State wants to run this situation, and O’Donnell is happy to let them do it. Mendez can’t help picking apart all of the various ideas that State has come up with to get a hostage out, as they’re the kind of ideas that sound good from a distance but would fall apart up close. (Like wanting to give the six hostages bikes so they could peddle for a border that is, as Mendez reminds them, several hundred miles away.) When Mendez comes up with his plan, State is hesitant to even listen, let alone sign on, but Mendez and O’Donnell’s sales pitch leads to two of the film’s best lines.

Both are from O’Donnell. On the way in to see Vice President Mondale (Hall) and another diplomat (really, the names of the diplomats and politicians are completely unimportant; as I said earlier, they work together to provide the Gestalt of Dissent), O’Donnell tells Mendez that talking to these two is going to be like “the Muppets talking to Statler and Waldorf.” Once inside the meeting, Mondale is skeptical and openly wonders if they don’t have better ideas, to which O’Donnell replies, “This is the best bad idea we’ve got.”

It’s O’Donnell that has the best dramatic scenes in the back half, too. After telling Mendez that the White House has called off the plan, Mendez stews on it (he takes a bottle of alcohol from the Canadian embassy but barely touches it), and then decides he’s going ahead with the plan anyways, White House be damned. This causes all sorts of problems for O’Donnell because Mendez’s plan needs his help. Specifically, O’Donnell needs to get the seven plane tickets out of Tehran confirmed before Mendez gets to the airport, or they’ll be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Cranston is fantastic running around Washington getting these tickets verified (he needs Presidential approval) and there’s a good bit of tension in Tehran with Mendez and the hostages getting through security. There are a couple beats that come off as trumped up, such as the tickets not being approved when Mendez checks in, but then appearing 30 seconds later, or Siegel and Chambers getting back to their office just as the Iranian security guard was pulling the phone away from his ear, but they don’t hurt the film in a significant away.

Indeed, even though I knew everyone was getting out, Affleck and his team do an amazing job creating as much tension as they do about what is essentially seven people getting on a plane. Affleck uses a lot of close-ups and a lot of contrasting frantic Iranians with nervous Americans, but it works really well.

Since I don’t watch awards shows, I don’t have any way of handicapping ARGO’s chances for getting nominations, but this is a very good movie. It is a quiet movie, though, that seems destined to be lost between the summer’s noise and the winter’s emotion. The only kick I get out of awards is that I realize that if people I like getting nominated or even win, that means there’s a greater chance I get to see more of them. There’s been a critical response around ARGO that Ben Affleck has arrived as a director. We see that Warner Brothers has taken notice, as Affleck was rumored to be in consideration for the Justice League movie. Both of these are good things for me because I like Affleck as a director. I see ARGO much less as a sign that he’s arrived, and rather as a sign that he’s established himself as a director who makes movies I want to see, as much for the stories he chooses to film as the way in which he assembles them.

Whatever film he directs next will be a film I’m already lined up to see.

THE ROCKETEER: When They Begin the Beguine

The Rocketeer (1991) – Directed by Joe Johnston – Starring Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino, Terry O’Quinn, Joe Polito, Tiny Ron Taylor, Ed Lauter, Clint Howard, Margo Martindale, Eddie Jones, and William Sanderson.

Oh, the tricks time can play on one’s mind, at times.

When I pulled the DVD sleeve out of the Netflix envelope, I thought they had made a mistake by listing THE ROCKETEER’s year of release as 1991. 1991? 1991 was the year of Ten, Nevermind, and The Enemy Strikes Black. THE ROCKETEER was before that. Way before that. I would have sworn it was released pre-1990 rather than post-1990 because I remember ROCKETEER with the hazy edges of distant recollection that typically comes from watching a movie when you’re young. The idea that it was released two months before Ten just does not seem right.

And yet, Netflix was right and my head was wrong, so score one for the Red Envelope.

THE ROCKETEER is a wonderful film. It’s safe, soft, simple, relatively all-ages friendly, and just plain fun. Joe Johnston creates a 1930s America that’s pure Americana mythology: hard-working, low-earning Californians struggling to get their dreams off the ground not because of lack of talent, ambition, or effort, but because of a lack of cash and some very bad luck. They get embroiled in a plot involving Howard Hughes, the FBI, the mob, and, because it’s 1938, Nazis. What’s great about ROCKETEER is that it manages to feel both time-worn and fresh all at once, and the overall effect is that it feels like an old, unread comic book from an era you love.

Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn) has developed a single-use rocket pack that gets stolen by some mobsters. During a chase with the FBI, the last-surviving thief stashes the pack in an airfield hangar, where it’s eventually found by pilot Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell) and mechanical engineer Peevy (Alan Arkin). The FBI mistakenly takes the wrong piece of equipment back to Hughes, and head mobster Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino) tells Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) that while they weren’t able to acquire the rocket pack, it’s not lost, as the FBI thinks.

Billy’s having his own problems with sweetheart Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly). We know that Cliff loves her because he keeps a picture of her in his airplanes when he flies, and even risks his life to save Jenny’s picture from a crash, but his relationship with the real Jenny (as opposed to photographic Jenny) is more problematic. She has her dreams, too. Jenny wants to be an actress, but Cliff, instead of being supportive, keeps making comments about how she’s just a background player in these films. Cliff never comes across as a huge jerk (just a small one), because his comments come across as Cliff being frustrated with his own financial situation, and the general financial unease of everyone’s situation around them. Cliff is also a homebody and Jenny isn’t; when they eat dinner at the small diner by the airfield, Jenny talks about her desire to go someplace else, someplace new and expensive, and Cliff

Peevy does some tinkering with the rocket pack and builds a helmet to go with it to control steering, but the device doesn’t get a proper test until Cliff’s late arrival at an airshow causes an older pilot to take his place. Something goes wrong and Cliff decides using the rocket pack is the only way to help. So he does, and we get a decent action sequence that sees the public enthralled with this new addition to the airshow.

All of the action sequences in ROCKETEER are executed well without ever becoming spectacular. Johnston does well to create the action in memorable locales (during an airshow, at a swanky club, on a Nazi zeppelin), which helps to elevate the effectiveness of the scenes. Take the airshow where the Rocketeer (not named so until afterwards by someone else) makes his debut. He goes zipping around the skies and hanging off the bi-plane that Malcolm is flying (while dressed as a clown), but nothing here is overly complicated (by action movie standards; I’m sure it took plenty of skill to actually do). Some of the best parts of the scene are when the Rocketeer falls off the plane and then re-ignites his rocket during the fall. Or on the zeppelin, when Johnston wisely uses the coolness (and close quarters) of the ship to make the scene work. We get establishing shots of the zeppelin in flight, but most of the action takes place either inside the small cabin area where broken windows and ricocheting bullets take on a greater importance.

And that swanky night club – I never get tired of seeing scenes take place in 1930s nightclubs. I love the costumes, the sets, the big bands … when the band lays into the Cole Porter-penned classic, “Begin the Beguine,” I feel transported to this era.

ROCKETEER sets up a “three army” conflict between Cliff and Peevy, Hughes and the FBI, and Sinclair and the mob. That’s a lot of moving parts but they have very simple actions, so the plot never gets complicated. The big “twist” ends up being the reveal that Sinclair is a Nazy spy.

Dalton is really the best part of the film. He’s the perfect actor to play a villain in a film like this because he’s charismatic and willing to poke some fun at himself. Sinclair is a thinly-veiled parody of Errol Flynn (who was accused of being a Nazi spy), and Dalton easily handles all that the film requires him to do – which is a lot. He’s the only character in the film that has any kind of real complexity, and whether he’s being charming with Jenny, demanding with Valentine, or ruthless with Cliff, Dalton makes it all work.

Everything comes to a head on that zeppelin. We get a big action shoot ‘em up between the FBI, Nazis, and the mob (with the mob siding with the FBI because, as Valentine says, he might be a crook, but he’s 100% American), but then it’s the Rocketeer on the zeppelin. He takes care of Lothar (Tiny Ron Taylor) on top of the zeppelin, then he and Jenny team up inside the zeppelin against Sinclair. Cliff tricks Sinclair into taking a damaged rocket pack and he tries to get Jenny to come with him one last time, but she’s not having it, calling him a liar. “It wasn’t lying, Jenny,” he tells her smarmily. “It was acting.” Then he flies off and blows himself up, crashing into the “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign and destroying those last four letters.

And now you know how that happened.

Even beyond Dalton, ROCKETEER is impeccably cast. Campbell, Connelly, Arkin, Sorvino, and O’Quinn all effortlessly fill their roles. As I said, the film doesn’t ask them to do a whole lot, but what it asks them to do is right in everyone’s wheelhouse.

With the Nazis defeated and the rocket pack destroyed, life goes back to normal, except Johnston allows them to have the Americana happy ending: Cliff realizes Jenny is more important than flying, and Hughes shows up to give Cliff and Peevy a Gee Bee plane for the national airshow. “What was it like,” Hughes asks Cliff of his time as the Rocketeer, “strapping that thing to your back and flying like a bat out of hell?” Cliff says it’s as close to Heaven as he’s ever going to get, but then sees Jenny in the background and says, “Or maybe not.” Good call, Cliff. Jenny has even managed to find the plans for the rocket pack and Peevy starts getting all technical, but as he’s talking to Cliff, Cliff is making out with Jenny.

The story in THE ROCKETEER is serviceable, but it’s the overall look and feel of the film that makes this film work. I love the Art Deco style of the Rocketeer’s costume, and the overall Americana adventure tone of the film makes this a fun film to watch and re-watch. THE ROCKETEER is quietly great, and even now, makes me feel like I did when I was a kid and read my Spider-Man, Captain America, and Green Lantern comics – I look at the Rocketeer and think, yeah, I want to be that guy.

THE MUPPETS: I Really Don’t Want to Go Back to Reno

The Muppets (2011) – Directed by James Bobin – Starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Alan Arkin, Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Zach Galifianakis, Donald Glover, Neil Patrick Harris, Dave Grohl, John Krasinski, Selena Gomez, Whoopi Goldberg, Jim Parsons, Judd Hirsch, Sarah Silverman, and Mickey Rooney.

Soaked in nostalgia and promising a new beginning, THE MUPPETS is very much a cinematic panacea for troubled times, suggesting that everything can be set right by refocusing on what – and who – is important in your life.

It is a resounding success, a pure triumph of pleasantness and simplicity, and if you don’t leave the theater with a smile on your face and a desire to reconnect with loved ones that you’ve let slip away, then you have less of a heart that the furry and fuzzy hand puppets that populate this film.

At times hilarious and at other times heartbreaking, THE MUPPETS is a sweet, sentimental prescription for the contemporary ills of America. It’s easy to say this film is awash in nostalgia (in part because it spends so much time reminding you that people have forgotten about the Muppets) but there’s more than that going on here; intended or not, THE MUPPETS offers a cultural critique for a nation that’s lost its way. Whenever anyone talks about how the Muppets have been forgotten, it feels like they’re talking about all of us, about the national collective that’s somehow come off its guiding rails so much that we’ve become something else and unwanted. Think of the Muppets as stand-ins for us and their once-beloved, now-decrepit theater as America. Tex Richman wants to tear up the Muppet Studios and dig for oil, but it doesn’t just feel like he’s being a dick to the Muppets (they’re not using the theater anymore, after all), but rather that he’s a stand in for political leaders who’ve sold out our country’s ideals in their insatiable quest for oil.

Lest one think the Muppets are free from this blame, they’re not, as they are consistently shown as being out of touch with modern America, toiling away at their own lives without concern for the larger whole. Kermit is holed away in his California house that Miss Piggy paid for, doggedly living in the past. He shares his dusty house with a 1980s robot that says anachronistic sayings like, “Gag. Me. With. A. Spoon.” When Kermit has ’80s Robot offer his guests Walter (a non-Muppet Muppet), Gary (Jason Segel), and Mary (Amy Adams) a drink, he brings out a tray of Tab and New Coke. While the film doesn’t push him into Howard Hughes territory, Kermit’s house is filled with large paintings of his Muppet colleagues; when he needs a moment to think, he walks down this painting-filled hallway, singing to himself and hallucinating his friends joining in to sing along with him to “Pictures in My Head.”

It’s a wonderful sequence and one of the best in the whole movie, displaying humor, sentimentality, imagination, and a really great song. Any qualms I had about the movie (and my hopes were actually rather high going in) were lost in this sequence and I could simply relax and enjoy everything that followed.

Kermit’s not the only Muppet shown as being out of touch. Everyone has gone their own way. (Well, everyone but Beauregard.) Fozzie is working with a Muppets cover band in Reno, Scooter is at Google, Gonzo owns a big shot plumbing business, Animal is taking an anger management course, Rowlf is hanging out on his porch, Sam the Eagle is a newscaster for a Fox News knock-off, Crazy Harry is busy blowing Abraham Lincoln’s face off Mount Rushmore, the Electric Mayhem Band is playing in the NYC subway, and Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue in Paris. I like that there’s a nice mix here, some of the Muppets have gone on to great personal success while others have fallen by the wayside; fitting in with the movie’s larger theme that American entertainment interests have shifted, it’s the Muppets who have stuck with entertainment (Fozzie, Electric Mayhem, Kermit) that are struggling the most.

The plot in THE MUPPETS sees humans Gary and Mary, and Gary’s Muppet brother Walter (no, this isn’t explained) visiting Los Angeles from their home in Smalltown, USA. Smalltown is the kind of place that’s semi-stuck in time – it’s simple, it’s old-fashioned, and there are few non-whites hanging around. Gary and Walter still share a bedroom and there’s a wonderful sense here that while the nation needs to revert back a bit, Walter and Gary need to move forward. Gary has been dating Mary for 10 years, but he’s a bit clueless in the ways that a teenage boy is clueless about why his girlfriend is mad at him – in short, because he simply doesn’t understand women. Gary and Mary are headed for LA for their romantic 10th anniversary and Gary thinks it’s a fine idea to bring Walter along so he can visit the Muppet Studios and see his heroes.

There’s a really nice sequence pre-LA that shows Walter and Gary growing up together; they start out the same size but as they age, Gary grows while Walter remains the exact same size. Gary cares deeply for his brother, always helping him out and making him feel included. When Walter is too short to get on a carnival ride, Gary blows it off and heads home with his brother as if that was the better option all along.

Mary clearly doesn’t want Walter to come, but isn’t willing to stand up to Gary and tell him, “No.” She clearly wants Gary to come to the realization on his own that she’s the most important thing in his life.

As Gary and Walter head to pick up Mary, they and the the town break out into a very catchy tune, “Life’s a Happy Song,” setting the tone for a nice sprinkling of musical numbers throughout the film. There’s old songs (“The Rainbow Connection,” “The Muppet Show Theme”), new songs (“Pictures in My Head,” “Life’s a Happy Song,” “Man or Muppet”), and non-Muppet songs (“We Built This City,” “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”). Director James Bobin sprinkles the songs perfectly through the film, and Bret McKenzie’s new songs deliver exactly what each scene needs.

When Gary, Mary, and Walter get to the Muppet Studios, they find it in complete disrepair. Admission only costs 50 cents, but even that seems a steep price given the decrepit condition. Walter sneaks into Kermit’s workshop and accidentally discovers that Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), his two Muppet henchmen (Bobo the Bear and Uncle Deadly), and Statler and Waldorf are conspiring to destroy the studios completely in order to dig for oil that lies beneath the property. If the Muppets want to keep the studios and the rights to their name, they’ve got to raise $10 million. The visitors from Smalltown head to Kermit’s house to let the depressed frog know what’s what, and convince him to reunite the gang in order to put on a show to come up with the cash.

Hopping in Kermit’s old Rolls Royce with ’80s Robot at the wheel, they start out on their trek. Their first target is Fozzie, who’s working in Reno. Now, I currently live in Reno and when the city was announced as the first destination and the signature Reno Arch made an appearance, the crowd offered up a knowing whoop and chuckle, a tangible sense of “Hey, that’s us!” and “Yes, this is where people circle the drain of life.” Fozzie is working with a Muppet “tribute” bad called the Moopets, who are rougher versions of the Muppets. (Dave Grohl has a cameo as Animool.) Fozzie has reworked “Rainbow Connection” into a casino jingle and there really isn’t anything more depressing than hearing a piece of the Muppet Show’s heart commodified in this manner. Fozzie puts up a fake protest during an earnest heart-to-heart with his friend, but he quickly joins Kermit on his quest. Gonzo follows, and then they realize this will take so much time they go to a montage to quicken things up.

It’s a knowing wink to the audience, and this kind of fourth wall acknowledgment is used throughout THE MUPPETS, which adds to the general pleasantness of the film. Miss Piggy is last on the list of Muppets to bring back into the fold, with Kermit actually willing to not go after her. The others protest and they’re off to Paris. When Mary tells Walter they can’t drive to Paris in a car, the Muppets tell her they can do it if they “drive by map,” and we see an image of a map pop up with the traditional hand-drawn route line taking us quickly from LA to France.

Piggy is working at Vogue and wants no part of the reunion because she’s bitter at how things worked out with Kermit, and just wants her ex to admit that he misses her and he needs her, but he can’t do it. They head back empty-handed to the States and hire Miss Poogy from the Moopets to fill in.

The film takes a sharp turn once the Muppets come aboard. For the first act, it’s a Gary and Walter movie, but once Kermit’s quest begins, the Muppets take center stage and the Smalltown residents hit the (literal) back seat. Full credit to Jason Segel, who’s growing star power was one of the driving forces to get this movie off the ground. Segel co-wrote the script, but he generously steps into the background once the Muppets enter the film; this is much more The Muppets with Jason Segel than it is Jason Segel and the Muppets. As an actor, I like Segel well enough; he has a sense of clumsy earnestness about him which makes me want to root for him. Amy Adams is completely endearing, and Chris Cooper seems to relish his one-note villain role.

There’s plenty of guest stars, too, popping in for quick appearances. It’s telling that Bobin and Segel draw on everyone from Mickey Rooney to Selena Gomez to give everyone in the audience someone to recognize, but the emphasis is definitely on the geeky-yet-hip set that’s in favor on TV right now: Segel, Neil Patrick Harris, that Sheldon guy from the craptacular Big Bang Theory, Rashida Jones, John Krasinski, Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, and their patron saint, Jack Black. When Selena Gomez shows up and admits to Kermit that, “I don’t really know who you are,” the same could be said going in the other direction, too. With all those hip comedians running around, it’s a pretty clear sign that Muppets fans from back in the day are the smart, in-the-know ones, but the film makes a point to bring in a wide-range of celebrities to remind us that the Muppets are for everyone.

Any film that can give celebrity guest shots to both Selena Gomez and Judd Hirsch wants to be for everyone. (And, you know, good on whomever decided to give Judd Hirsch a cameo; I love that guy.)

The Muppets convince TV exec Veronica Martin (Rashida Jones) to let them host a telethon; well, actually, they don’t convince her, but when a two-hour block conveniently opens up in the schedule, she lets them have the time as long as they can get a celebrity guest host.

That leads to a semi-sad moment where Kermit goes through his rolodex looking for that needed celebrity, but he’s so out of touch with the current landscape that he calls celebrities like President Carter and Molly Ringwald. When Kermit decides to give up for what seems like the 800th time, Piggy organizes a kidnapping of Jack Black. Jack was Animal’s sponsor for anger management (no one is allowed to say the d-word – drums – around Animal or he goes off) but he’s an unwilling participant in the telethon. He gets a good amount of laughs as the captive, tied-to-a-chair host during the show, insisting to the audience that he and Fozzie “are not a duo” as their laughter grows with each Fozzie bomb and Jack response.

The Muppet Telethon is pretty entertaining, containing humorous skits, but they fall short of their goal, and leave the theater having lost out to Richman. Outside, however, a huge crowd has gathered to welcome the Muppets back into the public consciousness. When they fell short of reaching their goal, there’s a sense of real disappointment, but when Kermit tells the gathered Muppets that they tried and that what’s important … it’s an incredibly touching scene.

There are several scenes like this in the movie which are surprisingly emotional and I’m not ashamed to say I could feel some tears starting to swell beneath my eyes a few times. If THE MUPPETS was simply nostalgia, it could be played just for laughs because the thing about nostalgia is that it comes with a recognition that those times are past. We might recapture faded glories for a moment or two, but they’re not coming back. MUPPETS is so much more than that because it’s not just an ode to what used to be, but an admission that important things were lost. THE MUPPETS really isn’t about making the Muppets popular again (that’s the understandable and external goal of Disney); it’s about scolding you for letting go of loved ones, and giving up on dreams. There’s a reason this film is out during the holiday season – it’s much easier to forget about disconnected friends and family in May or August, but not so easy during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s run. MUPPETS doesn’t just invite the Muppets back for one last nostalgia ride, but demonstrates how to get the important things in life back into your own life. There’s plenty of laughs and gags on the surface, but deep down THE MUPPETS is a film about recentering the self and the soul.

And fart shoes.

The cultural critique is there if you want to see it, but it’s perfectly easy to let all of the heavy stuff slide right past and just enjoy Kermit’s mix of self-doubt and optimism, Piggy’s egocentrism, Fozzie’s bad jokes, and the mere presence of all these Muppets back on screen. Gonzo, Rowlf (I’ll tell you about my Rowlf nightmare some day), Scooter, and the rest might not get as much screen time as you’d like, but they’re here and they’re contributing and it simply feels good to see them doing their thing again.

Clever, touching, funny … there won’t be many movies all year that make me leave the theater with a bigger smile on my face and spring in my step than THE MUPPETS.