Movie Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) 

Directed by Grant Heslov

Written by Peter Straughan 

Starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey 

Release Date November 6th, 2009 

Published November 5th, 2009 

Remote viewing is sort of a real thing. Real in that some people believe they can do it or enjoy conning others into thinking they can do it. So good were some of these con men that they convinced the United States government to fund a program that allowed them to train their remote viewing techniques. The book The Men Who Stare at Goats, by journalist Jon Ronson, is about the real life nuts and con men who took advantage of cold war paranoia to further their work in the world of the paranormal. 

The book is now a quite funny movie that slowly morphs into a mawkish tribute to morons and con men. Ewan McGregor is the star of The Men Who Stare at Goats. MacGregor plays Bob Wilton a journalist who, after his wife leaves him, decides to get embedded in Iraq to cover the war. Once their he stumbles upon Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Bob knows Cassady from an interview he did with a wacko who claimed the ability to stop an animal's heart with his mind. The nut claimed Cassady was the best psychic spy in the world.

Cassady prefers the title Jedi Warrior and maybe through some pop culture osmosis, McGregor was Obi Wan Kenobi, he senses a kindred spirit in Bob and decides to take the reporter with him on a 'psychic mission.' The two men wander out into the desert of Iraq and along the way Lyn recounts the wild, unbelievable story of his introduction to, and the creation of, what the government called 'The New Earth Army'.

Lead by Colonel Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) the New Earth Army was a plan to fight wars without weapons. Col. Django believed that the mind could be used to fight wars and encourage peace. Django recruited young men willing to explore their minds and dance free and grow their hair. Lyn Cassady was his prize student while Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) acts as the snake in the New Earth garden of Eden.

Director Grant Heslov tackles Jon Ronson's book with an eye toward satire. It is after all quite a wild idea that the US government paid to train psychic warriors. However, as the movie goes along, what begins as a biting satiric send up of this lunatic idea turns into a mushy tribute to goofballs who believe in the ridiculous. Instead of sending up the idea of psychic warriors, the director appears to buy into the idea, though not completely, and what appears intended to be a comedy becomes something closer to a tribute to weirdos and kooks. 

In the final act of The Men Who Stare at Goats a film that was building some satiric momentum devolves into a nutty homage to the numbskull characters who believe they have psychic abilities. It's a shame because a healthy dose of skepticism and reality is just what this material needed. A great cast in the end is drowned in lunacy and goofiness and while it's all very good natured, it also feels like a major missed opportunity. The Men Who Stare at Goats, in the end, is a disappointing sop that should have been a giddy satire.

Movie Review: The Messenger

The Messenger (2009) 

Directed by Oren Moverman 

Written by Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman 

Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone 

Release Date November 13th, 2009 

January 31st, 2010 

There are many jobs to be done in the American military and it is likely a great movie could be made about any of those jobs. Writer-director Oren Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon have chosen a particularly difficult job and crafted a great movie from its many emotional and professional complications.

The Messenger tells the story of Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), a recently injured soldier home from Iraq. Though Will is desperate to get back to the war his injuries need more time to heal and his commanding officer (Eamonn Walker) has a temporary job for him to do while he heals.

Will is assigned to work with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) in the Casualty Notification Service. It is Captain Stone's duty to inform the families of soldiers who are killed in battle. Captain Stone has been at this job a very long time and has some hard and fast rules for Staff Sgt. Montgomery to live by.

The first and most important rule is being professional. Do not engage emotionally with the family. Stick to the script which informs the family that the Department of Defense is sorry to inform them of the death of their loved one. Never touch the victim's family, no physical or emotional attachments are essential to performing this task.

The rules are practical to military standards but also provide a distance for the men of the casualty service who need the rules to keep the sadness and despair at the heart of the job at bay. Montgomery understands but cannot resist a natural tendency toward helping people. In battle he was often the first to rush to help a downed soldier, and in his new duty keeping his distance from the wounded is difficult.

It was inevitable then that one of the victim's families would get through Montgomery’s shell of professionalism. The wife of a late soldier, Olivia (Samantha Morton), strikes something deep within Montgomery and he cannot help but engage with her, eventually beginning to fall in love with her all the while trying to keep Tony from knowing about his breech of conduct. Of course, Tony is well aware of what is happening and seeing the young man make this mistake leads Tony to his own breech of conduct when he returns to drinking as a way of coping with the job. As these two men bond and battle the story takes on a tornado swirl of emotions.

Director Oren Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon structure the story of The Messenger as a series of vignettes strung together with scenes of male bonding through alcohol and immature sexuality. There is an inherent disconnect from emotion in this structure, one that actually plays very well to the overall story.

By structuring the film as a series of beginning middle and end encounters with victims families followed by scenes of Montgomery and Stone getting to know each other off the job, we get the disconnected feeling that Stone urges as the most important part of the job. This makes it even more effective when Montgomery begins to allow the job to bleed over out of the vignette and into the other portions of the story.

By the end, the wall that Stone so carefully crafted as a means of distancing himself from the tragedy of his job is nearly destroyed and it nearly destroys him. Montgomery meanwhile finds himself again through the despair and heartache and finds a renewed purpose that gives the film a hopeful yet nervy end.

The Messenger is a film of remarkable poise, poignancy and empathy. It features performances by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson that are hard but sensitive, tough yet compassionate. Oren Moverman made his mark as screenwriter in 2007 and now is a full fledged filmmaker with his exceptional work here.

Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon were nominated for an Academy Award for this original screenplay while Woody Harrelson earned a much deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination. This film deserved even more than that. The Messenger is powerhouse filmmaking.

Movie Review: The Messengers

The Messengers (2007)

Directed by The Pang Brothers 

Written by Mark Wheaton

Starring Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett 

Release Date February 2nd, 2007

Published February 1st, 2007

The two worst things to happen to modern horror are the rise of the PG-13 rating as a box office force and the rising influence of atmospheric Japanese horror movies. The PG-13 rips the guts out of the genre by not allowing guts to be ripped out on screen anymore. The rating robs the genre of its kink and cheap thrills and leaves nothing but the shrill screams of the soundtrack.

The influence of Japanese horror wouldn't be such a bad thing if American filmmakers could mimic it well. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by two The Ring's and two Grudge movies and the pitiful Dark Water with Jennifer Connelly, clearly we can't. Both of these bad trends come together in the latest haunted house horror flick The Messengers.

The last thing young Jess (Kristen Stewart) wants is to move to the middle of nowhere, North Dakota. Unfortunately for Jess, her dad Roy (Dylan McDermott) and mom Denise (Penelope Ann Miller), are forcing her to do just that. Dad has decided he is going to become a sunflower farmer and has used the family's savings to buy a dilapidated farmhouse and some empty acres.

Naturally, the house was once the site of a grizzly murder. A mother, her daughter, and young son, were killed in this house and their spirits haven't left. Only Jess's baby brother Ben can see the ghosts, though eventually, Jess gets up close and personal when they try and kill her. Joining the family on the farm is a mysterious wandering farmhand named Burwell (John Corbett) who may or may not have some history of his own tied up in the old house.

Commercials for The Messengers trade on the idea that small children, toddlers, can see things adults can't. It's an attention grabbing conceit. However, it has nothing to do with the movie that ends up on the screen. Yes, there is a toddler in the film and yes he does see the ghosts. However, the fact that the kid can see the ghosts has little, to no impact on the plot, it's more of a marketing tool intended to make you think of better movies in which kids see ghosts, The Sixth Sense. 

Director's Danny and Oxide Pang made the awkward but entertaining Japanese horror flick The Eye and now make their American debut with The Messengers. The new movie shares the debut picture's awkward style and low rent effects. What The Messengers lacks; and what The Eye had in abundance, is an original story. Working with first time writer Mark Wheaton, and from an idea from the man behind Jason X; Todd Farmer, the Pang Brothers deliver an uninspired bit of by the numbers direction.

There is some unintentional comedy in The Messengers, though not nearly enough for real camp fun. In one scene Dylan McDermott gets into it with some crows and ends up having to throw a haymaker at one, a dignity destroying bit of physical business. In another, John Corbett is engulfed by the evil black birds, reminiscent of a scene from The Simpsons in which Homer is attacked by crows. Oh, did I mention the fact that these bizarre bird attacks are entirely random and never actually linked to the plot? That's kind of important.

The special effects of The Messengers are about as bad as the directors fetish for black birds. The ghosts of The Messengers are The Grudge knockoffs with cracking bones and crawling on all fours on floors, walls and ceilings. Each has that very obvious digital glow about them that let's the audience know the filmmakers didn't have the money for the top notch digital effects.

The Messengers is a mindless rehash of a dozen other bad horror movies from The Ring and The Grudge to the long forgotten Sharon Stone-Dennis Quaid teaming Cold Creek Manor whose creators might consider looking into copyright infringement, the stories are so similar. The estate of the late great Alfred Hitchcock might consider litigation as well. considering The Messengers' oddball, non-plot related, bird obsession.

However, relating anything Hitchcock-ian to this thrill-less thriller is a little too insulting to the great master. Forget I ever brought it up, just as you would forget The Messengers moments after seeing it.

Movie Review: The Missing

The Missing (2003) 

Directed by Ron Howard 

Written by Ken Kaufman

Starring Cate Blanchett, Tommy Lee Jones, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd, Aaron Eckhardt 

Release Date November 26th, 2003

Published November 24th, 2003

I have never been a big fan of westerns and yet, this year, I have seen a pair of terrific films from that genre: Kevin Costner's elegant cattle rustling drama Open Range and an unknown indie western called Dust starring Josef Fiennes; a western that toys with the traditions of the genre in ways that bring it new life and vitality. Now comes Ron Howard's take on the western, The Missing. Like Open Range, it has some of the traditional archetypes and structure of classic western, but like the innovative Dust, it has a  lot of artistry and flair that the genre has always lacked.

Cate Blanchett stars in The Missing as Maggie, a healer in a backwoods New Mexico homestead. Maggie lives and works the land with her two daughters, oldest Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) and youngest Dot (Jenna Boyd), as well as a field hand named Brake (Aaron Eckhart) with whom Maggie is close. Their lives are mundane and, you might even say, dull, until Maggie's estranged father Samuel (Tommy Lee Jones) comes to their home in need of medical attention.

Father and daughter haven't spoken in years, not since Samuel ran off to live with Apache Indians, leaving Maggie behind with her sick mother who died soon after he left. Maggie grew up hard and fast and was only recently coming to terms with herself when Samuel shows up. It's not surprising when she angrily sends her father on his way. 

Unfortunately, Samuel will re-enter his daughter’s life again soon after when Indians kidnap Lilly and head for the Mexican border to sell her into slavery. Only Samuel has the means to track the Indians and get the girl back. The military, represented by Val Kilmer in a quick cameo, are hot on the wrong trail and are headed the wrong direction despite Maggie's pleading.

The Indian kidnappers are lead by a mystical man called Chidin, who Samuel is convinced is a witch. Chidin does indeed seem to have some sort of powers, though his motives are clearly just motivated by greed. Chidin is played by Eric Schweig who made a wonderful impression in 2002's Skins. Here, he is hardly recognizable under aging makeup and war paint, and he is more frightening than most horror movie villains.

Director Ron Howard had said he never wanted to make a western, but something about the unconventional elements of The Missing appealed to him. Howard liked that this western had a strong woman as its lead character. He liked that there were no card games or noontime shootouts at ten paces. The mystical elements of The Missing offered the opportunity to break many of the traditional western cliches. For the most part, Howard makes it work.

The success of The Missing starts with the casting of Cate Blanchett, a terrifically believable actress. Blanchett is a chameleon on par with Meryl Streep, Blanchett can play any role. Here, she plays what are essentially two roles. When we first meet Maggie, she is a hard bitten woman who is both mother and father to her two daughters. Maggie chops wood and cooks dinner. However, after her daughter is kidnapped, she is forced to become vulnerable and, as father and daughter slowly reconcile, she softens Maggie's edges in a way that is believable. Maggie never melts into a typical victim role that the character might have become in the hands of a lesser actress.

What can you say about Tommy Lee Jones? The man is toughness personified. In The Missing, even as he wears the ugliest, least convincing pony tail in film history, Jones still exudes toughness and wisdom. There is something about those deep lines in Jones's face; those lines communicate strength, intelligence, surprising humor, a most effectively wisdom. Jones' wizened visage carries gravitas, it has weight as much as age, intensity and experience. 

Credit cinematographer Salvatore Tatino with helping The Missing break with many of the western genres' most conventional elements. Using different cameras, film stock, and lighting Tatino and Howard paint a wonderfully unique looking western setting. The only significant problem with The Missing, is its length, which stretches too far past the two hour mark. 

There are a number of times the film could have ended but didn't and the final half hour is desperately padded with unnecessary scenes. It's as if screenwriter Ken Kaufmann, adapting a book by Thomas Eidsen, couldn't decide on an ending and kept circling back to wrap up forgotten and unnecessary plot points that could have been left for the audience to wonder about. Instead those plot points are resolved with pretentious, overlong bits of dialogue that threaten to sink the film near the end.

Thankfully Ron Howard pulls out of this bad run of scenes before the film completely faltered and, for most of its run time, The Missing is an enthralling western thriller that shows there is plenty more you can do with a western setting than mere gunfights and saloon brawls.

Movie review: The Mule

The Mule (2018) 

Directed by Clint Eastwood 

Written by Nick Schenk 

Starring Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Pena, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia 

Release Date December 14th, 2018 

Published December 13th, 2018 

Clint Eastwood’s career has been thought dead before but never by this critic. Never, until now. After suffering through his ‘experimental’ 15:17 to Paris earlier this year and now the misbegotten, The Mule, it feels as if Eastwood’s career as an auteur director is unquestionably over. Gone are the days of Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, deliberate and painstaking mood pieces that mixed character and drama brilliantly. 

Now we have movies like The Mule where the diminishing returns of Eastwood’s cranky old racist character have finally reached their ugly nadir. The Mule is Eastwood at his most tone deaf, and I’m not talking about his political incorrectness, this is a full fledged failure and not some political screed. The Mule isn’t merely proudly un-PC, it’s downright anti-intelligent. Where Eastwood used to be able to make up for story flaws with strong film-making, his ear for dialogue has gone deaf and his eye for visual flair is nearly blind. 

The Mule stars Eastwood as Earl Stone, a famed grower of Day-lilies. There is no need to remember this detail, it will play no role whatsoever in the movie. It’s an extraneous detail that plays like a failed rough draft that was never corrected in rewrites. That explanation may also work to answer Eastwood’s embarrassing early scenes in which he attends a flower show and delivers non-sequitur dialogue that would make Tommy Wiseau wince in recognition.

Earl chose flowers over his family, choosing the flower show over attending his daughter’s wedding The movie is so clumsy in detail that it makes it seem as if Earl has shown up at the wedding, he’s at a bar where there is a wedding party, before cutting to his having missed it and not speaking to his daughter (Alison Eastwood) again for more than a decade. He somehow manages to have a close relationship with his granddaughter, Ginny (Taissa Farmiga), though how he managed that without speaking to his daughter for most of the girl’s life is another clumsy detail in a series of dropped plot threads. 

Again, none of this matters to the central plot of The Mule. Yes, Earl’s strained relationship with his family, including his openly antagonistic relationship with his ex-wife, Mary (Dianne Wiest), is supposed to inform his character’s decisions in the main plot but the story is so muddled that he could have jettisoned the family story and it would not have altered the main narrative one iota. The Mule is shockingly lazy that way. 

The main plot of The Mule finds Earl down on his luck with his flower farm in foreclosure. Desperate for money, Earl accepts a shady job from a lowlife friend of his granddaughter. The job involves getting paid big money to drive drug shipments from Texas to Earl’s home city of Peoria, Illinois. Earl is perfect for the job because as an old white man driving a pickup truck, he is the single least likely person on the planet to get pulled over. That's not intended as trenchant observation of Police corruption however, that's more this writers observation than anything the movie characters have considered. 

No joke, he drives without a seat belt on for most of the movie and is never in danger of being stopped by police This could be a great opportunity to examine privilege and stereotypes but Eastwood shows no interest in exploring why an old white guy seemingly never has to worry about being questioned by authorities. Instead, the film appears to be a comic drama about Eastwood singing country songs in the cab of his truck while delivering load after load of illicit drugs. 

There is, I guess, some danger in the plot. The drug dealers threaten Earl’s life a lot and wave guns around a lot but he doesn’t react to any of it, as if age means that you don’t fear death or being beaten by drug dealers anymore. As much as money is his motivation, boredom could also play a role in Earl’s choice to become a mule. There appear to be no stakes on the line for Earl who uses his advanced age as an excuse to do whatever he wants. 

Perhaps that’s meant to be funny, Earl’s give no you know what attitude. Indeed, Eastwood could have been playing for laughs but there is nothing in Eastwood’s direction that indicates he’s being anything less than serious about this story. Just because it is terribly clumsy doesn’t mean it isn’t also dour in that way that bad melodramas are always dour as a way of seeming more dramatic than they really are. 

The Mule is downright dreary as it trudges to a finish that is unpredictable only because it is so messy it’s impossible to predict where we are headed. The film has no narrative momentum, it has no forward motion at times, scenes start, linger and peter out before being replaced by another. The scenes of Eastwood driving and singing along to old country and pop songs are endless and repeated to a torturous degree. 

Eastwood’s decline as a director is stunning. I won’t attribute it to his age because I still believe him capable of delivering a good movie. I think the issue is that he no longer cares for making movies. It’s my feeling that he likes keeping busy and collecting paychecks. 15:17 to Paris and The Mule are movies from a filmmaker who has nothing better to do and decided that making a movie with his buddies is a good way to pass the time.  Here’s hoping Mr. Eastwood had a better time making The Mule than we did watching it. 

Movie Review: The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) 

Directed by Rob Cohen 

Written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar 

Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Russell Wong, Michelle Yeoh 

Release Date August 1st, 2008 

Published July 30th, 2008 

Brenden Fraser has long been one of my favorite actors. No actor does big, goofy galoot, nearly as well as Fraser who has essayed roles as a caveman, as George of the Jungle, and in the Mummy movies a 40's era action movie leading man. Often, even when the movie really stinks Fraser remains above the fray, a goofy, good time presence. Unfortunately, even Fraser's good natured goofiness can't rescue the latest in the Mummy series, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. By the end of this 2 plus hour slog even Fraser seems tired.

When we rejoin the Mummy-verse, Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, replacing the not returning Rachel Weisz) have retired from the adventure business. After turning back the attack of the mummy Imhotep twice, and even an encounter with the Scorpion King, Rick and Evy are in a welcome respite. At home in their stately manse in England they spend lazy days fishing, writing and being bored out of their minds.

Yes, they actually miss the days when they were risking their lives against supernatural forces and narrowly escaping death through cunning and guile. So, when a British official shows up asking them to return to duty to accompany an ancient artifact to China they leap at the chance. And, as luck would have it, Evy's brother John happens to have moved to Shanghai and opened a nightclub.

Meanwhile, Rick and Evy's son Alex (Luke Ford) happens to be in China discovering the lost tomb of the legendary Dragon Emperor (Jet Li). Unfortunately, after he makes his discovery, Luke gets double crossed and a group of military exiles take possession of the Emperor and set about restoring him to eternal life. Now, Luke and his parents must join forces with an ancient witch (Michelle Yeoh) and her daughter (Isabella Leong) to battle the resurrected dragon emperor and his army of Terra cottar warriors.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was directed by Rob Cohen with a tin ear for melodrama and big action. Listening to characters in this latest Mummy movie chat, you get a painful series of scenes where characters state what just happened ir what happens next in stultifying exposition. It's the most perfunctory, irritating explication you can imagine. When they aren't explaining things to us that we are already painfully aware of, characters are professing their feelings to each other with lunkhead-ed platitudes that would make the folks at Hallmark wretch.

Of course, you can't expect a Mummy movie to have great dialogue, if you've seen the previous two blockbusters, and the offshoot, The Scorpion King, you know what you can expect of the script. You have to just hope going in that there won't be so much of those endless reams of expostion. Hopefully you get big action and effects scenes to drown out whatever waste of breath dialogue there may be. Stephen Sommers, who directed the first two Mummy movies, mastered the ability to put action and effects ahead of all else.

Unfortunately, Sommers is gone and replaced by Rob Cohen whose resume includes XXX and Stealth. Those films stink pretty bad but The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor somehow manages to be even worse. On top of the horrendous dialogue and atrocious melodrama, the action and effects of this Mummy sequel stink. Like digital Ed Wood characters, the digital armies of the dead look worse than most modern video-games and are a hell of a lot less interesting.

Compounding the problems is the grounding of Jet Li. Promoting Jet Li as the Dragon Emperor was a downright lie. Li's role is little more than a cameo. The dragon emperor is more often than not a dull special effect that hardly even looked like Jet Li. When Jet Li does show up he is asked to actually act as opposed to leap about and do things we want Jet Li to do. It's a baffling choice but essentially the filmmakers chose a bad CGI of Jet Li over the real life Jet, arguably one the greatest human special effects of all time.

As a third movie The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor had low expectations when it was completed and somehow manages to come in worse than those expectations. This is a tremendously bad movie that leaves little doubt why Oscar nominee Rachel Weisz rejected the idea of coming back to the role of Evy. With a script this bad and a director this inept it's a wonder this film attracted the onscreen talent it did. I'm still a fan of Brenden Fraser and with the charming Journey To The Center of the earth in theaters, it's not to hard to forget Tomb of the Dragon Emporer. I just cannot forget it fast enough.

Movie Review: The Muppet Movie

The Muppet Movie (1979) 

Directed by James Frawley 

Written by Jerry Juhl, Jack Burns 

Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dom Deluise, James Coburn, Elliott Gould 

Release Date June 22nd, 1979 

Published August 24th, 2018 (in conjunction with the release of 'The Happy Time Murders) 

There is a reason I love to look back on and remember and write about old movies, they can feel like new again. A great example of that is The Muppet Movie from 1979. I remember being delighted by this movie when I was a very small child, I watched it consistently alongside episodes of The Muppet Show. It was formative for me, elements of my personality and my my humor were formed from watching, Kermit, Miss Piggy and Fozzy.

Jim Henson's love of the absurd became my love for the absurd. Something like Pigs in Space which appears so inconsequential today, was the height of comedy for me as a child and has remained influential for me as I love a big, booming announcer voice and the simple juxtaposition that comes from the idea of pigs piloting a spaceship. Watch it today and you get an even more nuanced gag that plays on the pigs acting like the hammy actors from 50’s and 60’s sci-fi cheapies and, of course, WIlliam Shatner.

The glory of The Muppets is in the clever subtlety. The send up of Hollywood and show business in The Muppets is never mean, it’s wildly clever. Are there digs at the pomposity of showbiz phonies? Of Course, but they are done in the fashion of an elbow in the ribs prodding and not a baseball bat to the head obviousness. Watching The Muppet Movie in the wake of the release of The Happytime Murders helped remind me what a true joy The Muppets are and always have been.

The Muppet Movie sets out to tell the origin story of Kermit and the gang. In lore, Kermit was sitting on a log singing “Rainbow Connection” and playing his banjo when a big Hollywood producer (Dom Deluise) floats up on a boat. The producer is lost and needs to get back to Hollywood but first he tells Kermit that Hollywood is hot to cast frogs for a big movie. Kermit isn’t immediately excited by the prospect of leaving the swamp but he has a desire for some adventure so he gets on his way.

From there it’s a stop at a place called El Sleezo where, after encountering Madeline Kahn, James Coburn and Telly Savalas, Kermit meets his new best friend Fozzy Bear. Fozzy is attempting his stand-up comedy routine and it is not going well so Kermit jumped on stage and still things did not go well. The scene proceeds to a silly conclusion but one that sets the table for the kind of wonderfully slight gags we’re going to enjoy for the rest of the movie.

As Kermit and Fozzy are getting out of town, Kermit is approached by an oily fast food shop owner, played by Charles Durning, and his lackey, played by Austin Pendleton. The fast food man wants Kermit to become the face of his Frog Legs franchise but Kermit recognizes how awful that idea is and he and Fozzy make a hasty escape. Durning and Pendleton follow after and show up when the plot needs kicked along. Eventually we meet the rest of the gang, including Gonzo and Miss Piggy and we get plenty of songs and gags along the way.

The Muppet Movie was directed by James Frawley a surprisingly indistinct director for such a distinctive movie. Frawley’s background is in directing television and in 1979 and even since after The Muppets, Frawley has had nothing to do with The Muppets. With the way he captures the tone and the joy of The Muppets, you might reasonably assume that Frawley was a regular collaborator but he wasn’t, he was just a good hired hand.

It’s likely that Jim Henson stepped to the fore to really direct The Muppet Movie and make sure that it met the expectations of fans. Frawley was perhaps brought on board to assure studio execs that there was an adult in the room while Henson and Frank Oz and the rest set about bringing there silly puppet show to life on the big screen. That’s not to take away from Frawley who I am willing to bet didn’t just stand aside and allow the inmates to run the asylum.

The other part that likely got The Muppet Movie made were the cameos. Big time stars jumped at the chance to be in The Muppet Movie for a bit of business. I mentioned James Coburn, Madeline Kahn, and Dom Deluise already. Charles Durning and Austin Pendleton are actually part of the plot but then there are tiny bits of fun from Richard Pryor, Bob Hope, Mel Brooks, and Steve Martin gets an extended cameo as an angry waiter that is a real show stealer.

There are numerous other cameos as well, watch for Carol Kane’s double cameo, the second time she shows up is one of the most random and hilarious gags in the movie. There is an inventiveness to the humor of The Muppets that is too often forgotten when we remember them as kids entertainers or for their wonderful songs. There is a runner in the movie about Hare Krishna’s that repeatedly gets a laugh, the Carol Kane bit is completely random yet ingenious and the pie gag involving Durning and Pendleton’s villains is wonderfully, brilliantly absurd and well imagined.

Then there are those wonderful songs. Rainbow Connection may be a tad sappy but the way it is introduced and then brought back late in the movie is a fine piece of musical film-making. Movin’ Right Along is one of the most underrated and adorable songs of all time. It’s also an incredible piece of pop song tune-smithing. Paul Williams is rightfully remembered as a genius and while he received an Academy Award for Rainbow Connection, he could have easily received the nomination for any one of the brilliant songs on this soundtrack.

The Happytime Murders, if it accomplishes one thing, it got me to watch The Muppet Movie again. It reminded me of how wonderfully clever and inventive The Muppet Movie is. I know the films are only really related in name to Henson, Jim Henson’s son, Brian directed The Happytime Murders, but they aren’t truly related. The Happytime Murders is comedically sloppy and tonally inept. The Muppet Movie is exactly the opposite and completely hilarious, the films are in two completely different universes.

The Happytime Murders really could have used a James Frawley to reign things in and perhaps make things coherent.