The Muppets is a 2011 family comedy about a Muppet and 2 humans who regroup the Muppet gang to stop an oil mogul from taking down one of their precious life-longing treasures.
I know what you’re going through. Believe me. I’m still trying to figure out how to pay for the continuing therapy sessions needed to deal with the extreme mental scarring of having to sit through this year’s terribly ill-conceived and executed The Happytime Murders. You too? There are things we simply can’t unsee, try as we do. Either way, we’ve got to move on … put our best foot forward … and hope that things will soon return to some sort of Muppet sanity for our beloved childhood icons.
With that in mind, I found myself thinking about 2011’s The Muppets, a well-received and clever entry in the long running franchise that was a kind of passion project for its star Jason Segel. Light and airy, colorful and family-friendly, it was a small hit about a little Muppet fellow who discovers the Muppets on a television and yearns to join them, eventually working to get them all back together to stop a ruthless corporate stooge. Not a bad time at the movies. And geesh, it won a dang Oscar even. The first ever for the lovable puppets. Go figure.
And what was that Oscar for? A song of course, and if you’ve seen the film, you’re either desperately struggling to remember what it was because it’s just on the tip of your tongue or are already singing it out loud since it’s been stuck in your head on an endless loop for the past seven years. Not that I would have any experience with that. “Man or Muppet” by Bret McKenzie won Best Original Song, beating out “Real in Rio” from Rio, the only other nomination, though let’s be real here a sec, when your chances are 50/50 against a movie about a talking bird, well, there you go. Sorry Rio fans. But hey. I don’t have an Oscar nomination.
Either way. It’s a good song, the thing that makes it work the poignancy of the motivation mixed with the silliness of the theme. The question on the table for the filmmakers was, “How do we take seriously a man and a Muppet questioning their existence with any kind of impact?” Easy, said someone in the room who surely got a raise the day after the Academy Awards aired. Amp up the tune like a Celine Dion power ballad from the late 90s, toss in rain from a John Cusack movie and add a cameo by Jim Parsons in a tux. Print and cut. Hello Oscar gold.
It worked, and sure, it’s easy to see why. Who doesn’t what to see Segel staring at his Muppet reflection in a train window all sappy-eyed? Still, even as that song elevated the Muppets themselves to all new heights of melodrama, the song I’ve always liked best is the first one, right out of the gate. Here’s a sample:
It’s called “Life’s a Happy Song,” also written by McKenzie, and it’s just, well, all Muppet-y, sticking to the innards of your joy-joy heart with a sort of magical sweetness reserved just for things like this. I mean, look at some of these lyrics:
Life smells like a rose
With someone to paint
And someone to pose…
Life’s like a piece of cake
With someone to pedal
And someone to brake…
Life is full of glee
With someone to saw
And someone to see
It’s just so playful and earnest, using basic rhymes with a kind of surgical precision that should be smarmy but instead is genuinely fun … and a little touching. Mix that with some excellent choreography that moves Segel, playing the wholesome human Gary, and his ‘brother’ Walter, a Muppet, from their small home to the main streets and beyond, and you’ve got the makings of a classic 40s musical number. They dance with a milkman for goodness sake. And it works like a hot cup of cocoa on a cold winter afternoon. Mini marshmallows included. It feels good is what I’m saying. Gooooood.
So, if you want to get your Muppet mojo back in sync and begin the slow process of banishing the memories of The Happytime Murders like they were shades of Clementine in Joel’s head, then queue up The Muppets and make sure to turn up the volume when that first musical number kicks in. It’ll do the job. Or at least get you started. “Life’s a happy song … dum de dum de da…”