It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie Deview
Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll say that I love The Muppets. I may love them more than actual human beings. I didn’t grow up watching them but I discovered my love for them when Jason Segal rebooted them in 2011. I saw that movie and my mind exploded. I thought to myself, “how the actual fuck wasn’t I into this earlier?”. I watched nearly everything Muppet related and fell deeply in love with the original Muppet Movie. But, sadly, I’m not here to review any of the great Muppet classics. I’m here to review one that I didn’t even know existed until I found it streaming on Peacock. It’s called It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie.
Honestly, the title of this movie is just dawning on me. It’s a play on It’s a Wonderful Life which is arguably one of the best holiday movies to ever be made. If I knew that before putting this on I probably would have thought different of it.
To put it bluntly: this movie is a stinker. I’m pretty sure this was a last ditch effort to make people interested in The Muppets in 2002. It was made by NBC and Universal and, unfortunately it shows. I think that the producers knew that having just The Muppets wouldn’t be enough. So, obviously, they had a trillion cameos and even the Scrubs cast was in one four-minute scene! Woohoo! Yahoo! I love it! Molly Shannon makes a cameo which was pretty funny. Kermit calls her to get help with the show and she’s like “The last time I got close to frog they walked out on me” insinuating that she and Kermit dated? Is this canon?
This movie is about Kermit wishing he was never born and then seeing what life is like without him. It’s the exact same plot of It’s a Wonderful Life but not good! There’s this angel accountant guy named Daniel (played by David Arquette) who sees Kermit all sad and goes to God (played by Whoopi Goldberg (slay)) to convince her to help him. Whoopi as God is honestly the best part of this movie. When she’s introduced she’s chilling in this garden with a giant butterfly. It’s great. Daniel begs her to help her and she’s just like “Okay, if you don’t convince me to help then you have to organize my CD’s”. That’s queen shit right there.
So, they watch what led to Kermit all sad and alone in the snow. TL;DW: An evil banker named Mrs. Bitterman (played by Joan Cusack (slay)) screwed them over and is going to take away The Muppet Theater. Yikes! They put on a shitty show to raise the money to save the theater before 6pm on Christmas Eve and ALMOST pull it off. Fozzie fuckz up and doesn’t get the money to her on time. There’s a whole sequence where he turns into what looks like the Grinch and there’s actual Whos from Whoville (from the How the Grinch Stole Christmas universe I think?) who chase him.
This makes Kermit hate his life and Whoopi God is like “Daniel, go down and help this frog.” Daniel is all scared because he’s a dumbass and doesn’t know how to do anything but Whoopi is like “Just go, idiot”.
He goes down and shows Kermit his life if he wasn’t born which has Rizzo the Rat being eaten on Fear Factor, Gonzo as a busker in an abandoned mall, Fozzie as a pickpocket, Beeker and Bunsen as bouncers (this was actually funny because Beeker was jacked AF and instead of his iconic high pitched “mee mee” it was pitched down super low like “MEE MEE”), and a lonely, cat-loving Miss Piggy. This makes Kermit freak out and Daniel, the shitty angel guy, is like “I don’t know how to bring you back to real life”.
This makes Kermit even MORE sad because he realizes that all he needed in this life was his friends. AWWWWWWWWW! Gonzo sings a song in the mall about friendship and Kermit joins in and for the life of me I can’t even remember what the chorus was. I think it was like “We all matter” or some shit like that. It was campy and perfect for NBC I guess. I also can’t remember how he goes back to reality but that happens and everything ends up working out for Kermit and the Muppets.
Pepe the Prawn is a big part of the movie that I didn’t mention but he basically caused all this bullshit and then saves it and everyone is happy. Then, they do a reprise of that song I can’t remember.
So, was it good? NO! IT WASN’T! It didn’t feature Rowlf the dog, my favorite Muppet, at all! How could they do this? Do they hate happiness?
I’ll end this deview on a good note because ‘tis the season am I right? There’s a moment when Daniel and Whoopi God are watching everything that leads up to Kermit's depression and Whoopie God turns to Daniel and goes “You’re lucky Spongebob isn’t on.” This got me thinking of god in general. Like, if there was a god couldn’t they watch Spongebob and help Muppets save Christmas? They could do everything, everywhere, all at once. I’m guessing. I don’t know. Leave me alone. Happy holidays!
FINAL RATING: 4/10