Our family, which includes a 4 year old and a 7 year old, recently took in the new Muppet movie. We very, very rarely take our children to the theater; this is probably only the second time our 4-year-old has been. Knowing this movie was rated PG, we did our research and were comfortable with allowing our children to see it. Childhood wonder plus nostalgia seemed like a winning combination!
Our thoughts follow.
Previews: Since The Muppets is a PG movie, PG previews are allowed—NOT necessarily all for PG movies, but the previews themselves are rated PG. I suspect some of the movies were PG-13. Many were for movies that we would never consider letting children the age of ours see… violence, very scary characters, inappropriate plots, overstimulation (visual and audio), etc.
Before the “official” previews started (those shown after the published movie time) during the series of commercials and PSAs to silence cell phones, etc., there was even one for the new Twilight movie. WHAT????!!!!!!!!! To us, its PG-13 rating is unbelievable to begin with, and—even more unbelievable—was the fact that more than a year ago, Burger King was including Twilight-themed toys in their kids’ meals. Nothing from the Twilight movie has any place in the life of a young child.
To make matters worse, we got there really early in case it was crowded on opening night. So we were actually subjected to more than 45 minutes of this relentless assault.
After this movie, I spoke briefly to a young lady at the theater’s Customer Service desk. She was cordial as she explained that everything that was shown was based on corporate dictate.
The movie: The kids liked it. There was nothing overt* (I’ll come back to this point) in it that bothered us on their behalf. Well, Fozzy Bear had some fart shoes…:)
It was delightfully nostalgic and funny for me personally. I watched The Muppet Show back in the day, and the movie was all about getting the characters back together for a show to raise some money to rescue their old theater. Everybody you’d expect was there. The music was partly Muppet music, including “Rainbow Connection” and their old show theme song, and partly 80s music, including AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and Starship’s “We Built This City” (a highlight for the whole family). My husband Josh did NOT remember much about the Muppets from his youth, so it wasn’t so nostalgic for him.
There were a handful of very random celebrity cameos; I wish they had done more with them. Jack Black had a featured cameo appearance; I have no idea who this man is and after perusing a Wikipedia article about him, I still don’t.
*So here is my big problem with the movie: Once again, Hollywood/Disney portrays men as weak, indecisive, juvenile creatures; it would seem that only women are independent, intelligent and strong. The 3 main characters are 2 brothers (1 human and 1 Muppet.. think “Twins” with Arnold S. and Danny DeVito, taken to a new extreme) and the human brother’s girlfriend of 10 years (oh, isn’t that just a little long to be dating, fella?).
For the vast majority of the movie, the human brother can’t make a good decision or, really, much of any decision. The turning point of the movie is a duet with his Muppet brother called “Man or Muppet”, where the man brother finally gets the nerve to stop living for the happiness of his Muppet twin and to go find his girlfriend (who has left the vacation they all took together because she doesn’t want to spend it with a bunch of… uh… Muppets) and f-i-n-a-l-l-y propose to her. Here is the opening verse of the song:
i reflect on my reflection
and i ask myself the question
what’s the right direction to go
i don’t know
am i a man or am i a muppet
if i’m a muppet then i’m a very manly muppet
am i a muppet or am i a man
if i’m a man that makes me a muppet of a man
And then the Muppet brother sings his own verse. By the end of the song, they respectively “man up” and “Muppet up” and make good choices. The song and the dramatization of it were actually hilarious, a well written, well played, high comedic point in the movie.
A subplot involved Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Of course. It was touching. But, true to the theme, Miss Piggy was the only Muppet who had successfully moved on in the decades since the Muppets’ last collective success. Again: strong female, weak males (Kermit and others).
I’m glad the brothers rose up, but I was uncomfortable through most of the movie with the larger-than-life example that was being portrayed to my son and daughter of a man who wasn’t behaving like anything more than a Muppet.
Many who read this will think I’m making too much of a movie. The problem is that this message is everywhere and it’s completely intentional, and so this is just one more way of delivering an untrue and damaging message to our sons.
We care deeply about the messages sent to our children. We hope they listen to us more than they listen to a movie, but we can’t know what will touch their hearts most. It’s our job to do all we can to deliver the truth and teach them to discern it for themselves when false messages are communicated.
For adults: fun, nostalgic movie. For young children: fun movie. For older kids and teens: fun movie.
For all of us: enjoy the movie–let’s just make sure we don’t fall for the not-so-hidden messages.
We are not raising children or Muppets; we are raising men and women. Let’s pay close attention to the forces in our culture that would prefer to mold our men into Muppets.
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