There have been times when I thought I was going to completely write off Disney as a company.  Aside from my childhood and the early days of cable when, like anyone else who had that service, I almost exclusively watched their channel, I have always been ambivalent towards the Mouse.  My attitude was refined during my graduate school years when I learned of some of the cloak and dagger ways in which they have operated.  I will admit to being impressed with the quality of their work, but some of their enterprises have been questionable.  I went deeper into Disney-dom (dumb?) when I dated a woman who insisted I get an annual pass to Walt Disney World here in Florida.  She broke up with me before it expired, leaving me to find other friends with similar park access.  This led me to my great friend Isaac, my collaborator on Oh Man Disney, our TikTok and YouTube channel.  What has made me question all these choices has been decisions like closing one of my favorite attractions, the Great Movie Ride, and now taking down an entire section of Hollywood Studios dedicated to the Muppets.  I love these Jim Henson creations, and in honor of this momentous occasion, I give you my review of Muppets Most Wanted (2014).

Over the years, the Muppets have become characters divorced of the reality that they are, in fact, puppets, and Muppets Most Wanted starts with them questioning what they shall next do.  There is some needed context that is left out, the makers of the film picking up right after the previous iteration.  In any case, in this one their de facto leader, Kermit the Frog (voiced by Steve Whitmire), believes they will settle back into their old routine of putting on a variety show.  Before any final decisions are made, they are approached by the hilariously named Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), funny because the Muppets buy his story that his surname is pronounced “Bad-gee.”  He also impresses them by supposedly talking to a number of celebrities as he tries to convince them to allow him to manage a world tour for them.  Over Kermit’s reservations, they enthusiastically agree to his proposal.  At the same time, in a Siberian gulag, the world’s most dangerous frog, Constantine (voiced by Matt Vogel), escapes confinement.  He is in league with Dominic, and their plan is to meet in Berlin.  It is to the German capital that Dominic directs the Muppets, rather than other stops they hoped for like London or Paris.  Dominic manages to get them into the Berlin National Theater, which happens to be next to an art museum.  Before their first performance, Dominic suggests to a stressed Kermit that the frog take a stroll down a foggy, seedy street on the east side of town, and Kermit agrees.  Of course, Constantine attacks Kermit there, slapping a mole onto Kermit’s face to make him look like Constantine.  Once Constantine has disappeared into the mist, and Kermit is recognized by wanted posters on the street, Kermit is arrested and taken to the Siberian gulag.  With Dominic’s help, Constantine tries to pass himself off as Kermit, and the Muppets again accept Dominic’s line about their Kermit’s strange sounding voice as being the result of a cold.  During the show, Constantine and Dominic use the noise to hide them breaking into the next-door museum.  Their goal is a painting of Captain Thomas Blood, a historical Muppet who nearly stole the English crown jewels.  On the back of his image are his instructions on how he almost pulled off the caper, which involves a few stops in Europe to collect more items for the heist.  As they go, they are increasingly investigated by Sam Eagle (voiced by Eric Jacobson), a Muppet Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, and Jean Pierre Napoleon (Ty Burrell) of Interpol.  Because even they cannot ignore the correlation between the Muppets’ appearances and the burglaries, they follow the tour every step of the way.  However, they are not the only ones growing suspicious of Constantine’s identity.  If you are thinking Kermit’s longtime love interest, Miss Piggy (voiced by Eric Jacobson), is one, that is a logical guess but wrong.  She is mollified, as are most of the rest, by Constantine giving them whatever they want.  In Miss Piggy’s case, it is a marriage proposal.  Instead, the main one concerned is newcomer Walter (voiced by Peter Linz).  His doubts are backed up by Fozzie Bear (voiced by Eric Jacobson), who sees a picture in the paper of the real Constantine and notices how the criminal’s mole could be covered.  Between that and Walter’s misgivings, and Animal’s (voiced by Eric Jacobson) instincts, the three of them learn the truth.  Before Constantine can take care of the three, they jump off the train and make their way in comedic fashion to Siberia.  There, they find Kermit putting on a show for Nadya (Tina Fey), the gulag commandant who is obsessed with the showbusiness amphibian.  She is thus devastated when Kermit manages to escape with Animal, Fozzie, and Walter’s help.  Somehow, they are able to make it back to London in a day, where Constantine is telling the Muppets that their performing days are over once he marries Miss Piggy.  When the identical frogs confront her in the Tower of London’s chapel, she knows the real one when Kermit wavers on his commitment to marriage.  In response, Constantine snatches Miss Piggy and is about to take off with the loot.  He gets to the helicopter only to find that Dominic is “The Lemur,” a world-famous thief who is about to double cross Constantine.  Instead, Constantine kicks out his former partner, but is prevented from taking off by a chain of Muppet bodies.  Constantine is sent back to the gulag, and Nadya shows up to do the same to Kermit until he agrees to do a show in Siberia.  That is where the movie ends.

With the way Russia has invaded Ukraine, I was not keen on a sympathetic Russian character in Muppets Most Wanted. On the same token, neither was a thrilled when I saw Sean “Diddy” Combs (as himself) in the movie.  These are the only unfortunate parts of what is otherwise an entertaining Muppet movie.  They are great because they do not resort to raunchiness or toilet humor for laughs, and those are causes I can support as a Catholic.  It probably also helps that they are now Disney properties, even if the Mouse is not always sympathetic to Catholicism.  I would not call them antithetical either, to be fair.  What Disney seems to aim for the most is to be as inoffensive as possible to the broadest swath of society.  A commitment like this usually leads to some pretty terrible cinema, but the Muppets appear to be the exception.  As I have grown in my Faith, I have come to appreciate such a stance.  This comes down to God’s first and foremost imperative: that He loves everyone regardless of who they are.  At the same time, this can come off as bland and/or tolerant in a way that has been misused over the years.  God loves everyone, but He does hate sin.  As long as we are alive, we are called by Him away from our deviant behavior to be drawn closer to Him.  If we keep on this path, then the hope is that we will be the closest we can be to Him in Heaven.  We will stumble along the way, but we can always get back up again, go to Confession, and renew our commitment to Him.  He is forgiving, and we should be forgiving, too.  We see this exemplified in the Muppets and their attitudes towards each other.  Of course, it is portrayed in their madcap style, but it does not change the fact that they are accepting of people’s faults.  Sometimes this gets taken advantage of, such as Dominic playing on the Muppets trusting natures, but the fault is with Dominic, not them.  God is with you when you trust in Him and others.

I hope that you, too, will trust me when I say that Muppets Most Wanted is good.  Actually, you should not just take my word for it, but see it for yourself.  In my experience, you can never go wrong with a Muppets movie, and this one is no exception.