Dear Jason,
THANK YOU. You made a Muppet movie. A real Muppet movie, or, more accurately, a real next generation Muppet movie—reverential without being slavishly so, cheerfully anarchic, gleefully absurd, true to the tone of the original Muppets while still being something new. Something sweet and hilarious, smart and simple and the most genuine fun I had at the movies this year. I wasn’t sure it could be done, but if anyone could do it, it was a man who cried when he met Kermit. (This, coincidentally, is the same helpless reaction I would have if I ever met the frog.)
Now, we’ve never met, and the odds are super long we ever will (though if you’re ever in Boston, the least I can do is buy you a beer). But I nonetheless feel confident saying we share an essential likeness—you, me, and everyone else who’s a member of the Muppet Generation. We were born in the late ’70s and early ’80s into a popular culture bursting with Henson creations of every stripe, in every medium—TV, movies, cartoons, toys, and comics. We took it all in, and thirty years later we’re still drawn to bright colors and bad puns. We can’t pass by store displays of hand puppets without playing with them. We see anthropomorphic possibilities in every inanimate object, and occasionally make said objects belt show tunes. We’re starry-eyed wishers and, deep down, we believe in some pretty un-ironic big-ticket items, like: it’s important to be kind. Dreams are worth chasing. Chickens just want to sing.
I was ten when Jim Henson died—it bears mentioning, at the criminally early age of 53—and I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news: in the car with my parents (who, appropriately enough, I went to see The Muppets with this past weekend). I also remember, just as clearly, feeling a wave of horrible, not-fair sadness for the loss of everything I was already looking forward to. As I grew up and the Muppet characters bounced from the Henson family to various holding interests to Disney, anything new with Muppets increasingly felt like “The Muppets” ™Disney. They looked like my old friends but they were missing a critical, essential element.
Speaking of un-ironic, big-ticket items? Yeah, what they were missing was love.
A new, true Muppet movie couldn’t have been born from a desire to revitalize the brand. It couldn’t have come purely from professional respect or familiarity. It had to come from love, the kind of love a kid feels—the kind that gets hard-coded into a kid the first time she sees a frog playing a banjo, the first time that frog tells her life’s like a movie, and she should write her own ending. Now is the perfect time for a Muppet renaissance, precisely because enough time has passed for the kids of Generation Muppet to have reached the age where they are the ones leading the charge to bring their first comedy heroes back to the world. That’s Jim Henson’s legacy—that we, the members of Generation Muppet, so loved what he gave us that we want nothing more than to give it to others.
So here’s to you, Jason Segel—and Nick Stoller, James Bobin, Amy Adams, the incredible Muppeteers and everyone else who made The Muppets happen. And to Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Rowlf, Scooter and all the rest—great googly moogly, I missed you. And I’m thrilled that you’re back in a form that can and should be shared with the next Muppet generation, even as it reminds us what it means to be a member of the first.
No matter how ridiculous we are, how strange or fuzzy or furry we may be; no matter how terrible our jokes or how often we like to be shot out of cannons, we are all Muppets. We’re from the same tribe. We’re lovers and dreamers. And chickens.
WELL PLAYED, SIR.
Kate
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