Thursday, February 6, 2014

Muppet Reviews: Muppet Treasure Island


And speaking of Muppet Treasure Island, our friend Rachel Herrick's back with her latest Muppet movie review. Check it out here.


She pretty much nails  what works - the songs, and what doesn't  - the dumb characterizations, but I'll add my 2 cents. 

This film went into production before Muppets Tonight, but was released during the first season's original run. This caused an issue for me as, the Muppets were trying to introduce a bunch of new characters on the show, Johnny and Sal, Pepe, Bobo, as well as an expanded role for Clifford, yet when this film premiered non of those characters were to be found. An early version of Sal was performed by Jerry Nelson in the opening number and that's it.
From that moment I could tell that this movie was basically going to reject any of the MT characters and instead focus on the more popular Muppet Show characters. Which is fine, but every time I watch it I imagine how much better this film would have been if Pepe and Clifford were included. 

I think think MTI also suffers from being made after the very successful classic retelling of Muppet Christmas Carol. It's as if the Disney execs said "We want you to make another film just like that last one", and it feels like a bit of a retread because of it.  If say, Muppets from Space or another film was made in between Muppet Christmas Carol, and Muppet Treasure Island I don't think Treasure Island would feel this way. 




One thing that really bugs me about MTI is the song "Cabin Fever." No I don't think it's out of place like Rachel says, but that it suffers from editing. For some reason a few lines were cut in the movie version that are included on the soundtrack and it's fairly noticeable and jarring.

That's not to say Muppet Treasure Island isn't enjoyable, but it's probably my least favorite Muppet feature film. 

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