Picture from It's Nice That

The unveiling of this year's Christmas adverts happened far too early (they'll be premièring the John Lewis advert in June at some point during my lifetime and that I will put money on) and by now they have been reduced to edited highlights and everyone has forgotten about them already. Sainsbury's and Co-op have caught up having not bothered to try and get a look in on the same day that John Lewis threw their effort out, and they haven't done too badly. Sainsbury's are going to make a superstar out of Mog the cat and Co-op followed John Lewis with the lonely elderly theme but did it far better. 2015 is certainly not a vintage year for the Christmas adverts, or indeed television in general but the best advert of the season, if not the year, has dropped. 

I have written before about how since the death of Jim Henson, his creation The Muppets have drifted around in search of a decent vehicle. The Muppet Christmas Carol stands out as the only truly decent project among the sea of straight to video specials and weak television appearances. Several attempts have been made to keep their profile up but for who? They aren't sophisticated enough for today's techno kids and the older people like myself who have a deep affection for them do not want to see the legacy weakened with every new idea. This rudderless feeling soon turned itself around at the release of The Muppets, written by a true fan who had obviously paid attention. The follow up film, Muppets Most Wanted, saw the standard fall a bit again mostly because they borrowed too much from one of their classic movies The Great Muppet Caper and turned it into a decent enough film that could have been both better and worse.

However, not only have the Muppets triumphed with their latest venture - an advert -  but they have also wiped the floor with every Christmas advert made this season, and they haven't even made a Christmas advert. Warburtons, a bakery based in Lancashire, have followed an advertising campaign starring Sylvester Stallone with this latest campaign starring The Muppets. How Warburtons keep managing such scoops is beyond me but I assume they can afford it. 

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I credit/blame Paddington Bear for getting Mandi and me together all those years ago, although I can’t remember the exact circumstances or indeed if this story is even true. We have watched the original television series together on many occasions and even now with its stop motion animation and painted background it is a work of art and every bit as funny, funnier in many cases, than any number of sitcoms. The cartoon series can fuck off of course.

Ever since I found out that there was a proposed film I have been worried about what was going to happen to my beloved Paddington. My biggest fear is that it was going to be made in America and Americanised in the way that Thomas the Tank Engine became Thomas and the Magic Railroad and he’d be eating pizza instead of marmalade sandwiches and wearing a baseball cap and everybody would be appalled. I was also worried (I’ve hardly slept for the last year worrying about this Paddington business) about the bear itself. Paddington Bear looked like a teddy bear in the original TV series, (the illustrations in the book were also very cuddly) which worked for the gentle nature of the stories. This new imagining of Paddington made him look too much like, well, a bear. Fictional bears have one thing in common; they don’t really look like proper bears, look at Yogi, Fozzie, Sooty and however many other bears that I can’t think about at the moment. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to see this film as much as I wanted to eat my own feet.

To add to my reluctance to watch this film there were other obstacles in the way, first of all it would mean having to go to the cinema which is something I hate because there are other people there and in the case of what is essentially a film for small children, it meant that there would be small children there. Other people’s small children are the worst people in the world when you are in a space where you are supposed to be quiet, although this afternoon’s crowd was a reasonably well behaved bunch, there was a low rumble of talking going on but luckily the film was loud enough to be able to zone them out. When I went to see Muppets Most Wanted I got quite annoyed at the behaviour of the audience and got two free tickets as an apology when I complained (which we didn’t use today as I received a gift box of Cineworld tickets for Christmas), so I anticipated at least one occasion of me shouting at someone smaller than me to shut up.

The film felt the need to start with a back story about Paddington’s upbringing in Darkest Peru, which made sense later in the film but I won’t spoil it. Even though it is set in the modern day it is true to the original books and also to the comedy of the TV series. Hugh Bonneville is perfectly cast as Mr. Brown, head of the family that take in the furry refugee and something of a stuffed shirt of a dad to his long suffering family. With Julie Walters, who can do no wrong, plays the batty old lady housekeeper Mrs. Bird and there is a scene stealer of a cameo from Matt Lucas as a London taxi driver. The family (obviously) eventually warm to Paddington and allow him to stay and become one of the family, leading to a transformation in Mr. Brown’s outlook on life which makes the household happier and more affectionate – very much in the style of that other Christmas holiday favourite Mary Poppins (New Year’s Day, BBC1).

Michael Bond, Paddington’s creator, appears at the beginning of the film raising a glass to his character and rightly so. I had tears running down my cheeks as the final line of the film was spoken by the bear himself, they were tears of emotion having seen such a brilliantly made film combined with relief that the film makers had taken heed of the instruction written around Paddington’s neck, and looked after this bear very well indeed.

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I hate going to the cinema and only went last night because I really wanted to see Muppets Most Wanted as soon as was possible. There was a showing at ten o’clock last night but Mandi didn’t want to go that late, and I didn’t want to go too early due to the cinema being full of annoying children. It isn’t just children at the cinema that piss me off, adults can be the biggest arseholes when it comes to the cinema experience, and the biggest crime of all is talking during the film. I would vote for whichever political candidate that promised that they would pass a law allowing us to kill these offenders and leave their still warm bodies in their seats as an example to others.

To my surprise, the film wasn’t in Cineworld’s biggest room, and there were still a fair amount of empty seats. This to me is perfect for a night at the cinema as there are fewer people to piss me off and take away from my enjoyment of the film. We sat at the back of the cinema on the seats at the very top of the stairs, meaning that we wouldn’t be inconvenienced by another person I hold under the ‘cinema cunt’ umbrella, the really tall person who finds the shortest person in the room to sit in front of.

Along the back row there was a group of teenage girls who kept walking right past us and leaving the cinema, this was just about tolerable during the interval but they carried on this behavior during the film. They only stopped when on the way out during one of their frequent trips I snapped and said “either you’re watching the film or you’re not watching the film”, and when they came back in I told them that this was the last time. I was careful not to swear as there was a mother with a child on the same row, even though the child was also annoying me until I delivered a stern ‘shush’ across the row. Don’t take small children to the cinema if you can’t teach them to behave. This rule also applies to restaurants, cafes, libraries, and swimming baths, everywhere public really. You used to have to have a licence to own a dog yet anybody with a vagina can have a baby, regardless of their capability when it comes to looking after the fucking thing.

After the film was over I found a member of staff and made a complaint about the fact that these future burdens on society were given free rein to walk in and out of the film and get on my tits. I pointed out that in the olden days there was a cinema usher who was there to keep order, keeping everyone behaving themselves and shutting up the chatterers. As you can see from the above picture, my complaint was taken seriously enough to earn us a complimentary ticket each for a future film. While this might be chalked up as a victory for decent people, this means that they are essentially paying for us to have the same horrific experience again.

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We’re doing a sequel
There’s no need to disguise
The studio considers us a buyable franchise
We’re doing a sequel
The studio wants more
While they wait for Tom Hanks to make Toy Story 4
(‘We’re Doing A Sequel’ – Bret McKenzie)

It was inevitable that the success of The Muppets in 2012 would spark an interest, but there was a worry that another Muppets film wouldn’t be as good. I wrote at the time that the post-Henson years weren’t brilliant, The Muppets Christmas Carol being the last great Muppets vehicle. Half-arsed attempts were made in the intervening years to keep the name alive, but nothing happened that made people sit up and take notice until the release of the 2012 film. You had to imagine that the gang hadn’t worked together since 1992 for the last film to work, and it did work due to the fact that it was written by people who genuinely loved The Muppets and wanted to do it justice.

The Muppets shouldn’t really be squarely aimed at children, neither should it be squarely aimed at grownups, and this has been the problem with the Muppets during the wilderness years. Since the Disney Company took over they haven’t exploited the full potential of the Muppets, keeping them in the public eye for seemingly no other reason than because they had paid a lot of money for the privilege. The straight to DVD ventures such as Kermit’s Swamp Years was aimed at small children who might not even have known who Kermit the Frog was. Jim Henson couldn’t get The Muppet Show made in America because he was associated with children’s television due to Sesame Street, and he couldn’t convince anyone that adults would watch a show that starred puppets. It wasn’t until he found a backer in the UK that The Muppet Show saw the light of day, broadcasting in the not entirely child friendly 8pm time slot on Sunday nights. My dad tells me that this was the talk of the workplace on Mondays, and he was unable to join in due to my fear of The Muppets that used to mean it got switched off. There were no means available back then to watch programmes again if you missed them. I am no longer scared of The Muppets.

The Muppets played on this affection held by people of a certain age, using clever back references and pulling at the tear ducts right at the end with a beautiful rendition of ‘Rainbow Connection’. Maybe this helped to bring The Muppets to a whole new generation of fans, or maybe it reminded the grownups how much we loved them in the first place, maybe a bit of both. What is certain though is that the film was a huge success and as the opening song says, making a sequel is how they do it in Hollywood.

Once again they have managed to make a ‘proper’ Muppets film that Jim Henson would have made. Drawing on the past for inspiration while keeping an eye on the future of the Muppet machine, Muppets Most Wanted is a classic Muppet film through and through. Starting right at the end of The Muppets, the gang wonders what they’re going to do until they realise that the camera is still rolling, prompting Statler and Waldorf to glumly predict the inevitable; that a sequel is on the cards. This kicks in the opening song and dance number ‘We’re Doing A Sequel’, brilliantly satirizing the fact that Hollywood can’t let a good idea die with the line “And everyone knows the sequel’s never quite as good”. Sadly, this is the case as the film does have its slow moments. The slow moments are outweighed by classic Muppet brilliance thankfully, sending the gang on a world tour to capitalize on their recent success. The world tour is actually a con trick that will see the Muppets accused of a series of daring robberies, the theatres all being next door to museums and banks. Ricky Gervais plays the role of Ricky Gervais David Brent Andy Milman Bertram Pincus Mark Bellison Dominic Badguy (“pronounced Badgee, it’s French”), who convinces the gang to take The Muppet Show on tour. Badguy is working with Constantine, an evil Russian frog who not only is the world’s most dangerous frog, but also shares a resemblance to Kermit.

Although it would have been easy for the filmmakers to simply pull a spare Kermit puppet from the props cupboard and stick a mole on his face, they actually made a puppet that was intentionally slightly different. The eyes are the biggest giveaway, along with his eleven point collar being shorter in length.

Escaping from a high security Siberian Gulag, Constantine swaps places with Kermit by ambushing him and gluing a mole to his face allowing him to be captured and re-imprisoned. With clever use of green concealer, Constantine manages to pass himself off as the Muppets beloved leader to carry on with the tour and the master plan to steal the Crown Jewels. The tour doesn’t really matter, with Constantine (who everybody thinks is Kermit) allowing the gang to have creative freedom to do what they like on stage. The Electric Mayhem do a four hour jam, Gonzo does an indoor running of the bulls, and Miss Piggy sings a collection of Celine Dion songs. Dominic has been bribing newspapers to write glowing reviews, giving the gang the incentive to carry on performing at venues in Berlin, Madrid, Dublin, and London.

The plot tips its hat to The Great Muppet Caper in many of the heist sequences, especially with a Muppet being set up and imprisoned, only for the baddies to be beaten in the end. Musically, the film’s soundtrack once again mixes brand new songs with some cleverly done covers, ending with a re-working of ‘Together Again’ (sang as ‘Together Again, Again’) from The Muppets Take Manhattan. It was also good to see appearances from Muppets who hadn’t been seen a great deal in recent years; Scooter, Rowlf, Wayne and Wanda, Lew Zealand, and several ‘whatnots’ from The Muppet Show.

Ricky Gervais is someone who has never before put a foot wrong creatively, responsible for such gems as The Office, Extras, and Derek among other things. He has always had enough integrity to turn down unsuitable roles, (apparently being offered a load of low standard film roles after the success of The Office), until his recent inexplicable car advert. The Muppets have a long history of being a sought after guest spot, look at the guest list of The Muppet Show and the people who made cameos in the films, even the less good efforts. It is entirely understandable that Gervais would jump at the chance to appear with The Muppets because you just don’t turn that sort of gig down. There was a worry that he would take over things and turn the film in a Ricky Gervais vehicle with his sometimes overbearing presence. Thankfully, despite his limited acting range he does take a back seat and allow the Muppets to take centre stage.

Here’s to the next film.

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans underway for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative, and plenty more including documentaries, short films, and podcasts.

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