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The Great Muppet Caper. It's a bold proclamation right there in the title and frankly, it would be hard for any film to live up to that much promise of excitement and wonder. The second theatrical film starring Jim Henson's beloved creations strives mightily to deliver those qualities and whisks through almost every movie genre imaginable in the process. For all its unevenness and a few lulls, Caper delivers on a pure lunatic level more than others in the series and at times is just about able to capture the flavor of The Muppet Show. It also contains an unexpected ace in the hole in the form of Charles Grodin's Muppet-like performance. I will come back to that later in the review.

I pride myself on being critical and logical in my film evaluations - even if emotion is involved - but I find it truly difficult to be negative about the Muppets, because, well, they're the Muppets, dammit! (In the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that my adolescent nickname was Beaker). They're not just a part of my childhood; they seem so timeless they should be a part of everyone's childhood. I had the chance recently to see a good quality film print of Caper at a repertory theater in Portland, OR where I live. It was part of a month-long retrospective entitled Jim Henson's Legacy and covered all things Muppet and muppet (including The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth) on the big screen and small from the early ‘70s through Henson's death at the beginning of the ‘90s.

My first thought was how wonderful it was to see Kermit and the gang in a darkened auditorium again. This was immediately followed by a simple yet important observation: the reasons the Muppets work when they are used well is that they are as real as humans. Perhaps this elicits a "well, duh" from the reader. I feel strongly that the reason the Muppets have fallen out of commercial favor is that this elemental fact has been forgotten and they have been taken for granted and treated as mere props. Consider this: the cameos in the films by famous names (and the guest stars on The Muppet Show) work best when the humans play it straight and can treat their fine-felted friends as equals. Peter Falk's non-sequitur of an appearance in Caper, wearing Columbo's trenchcoat but seemingly improvising an epic monologue made for a Cassavetes film is a luminous example.

I don't begrudge any film that finds a reason to assemble The Muppets together again. Discounting my ever-increasing dissatisfaction with the larger parts accorded to Rizzo as time has gone by, the joy of seeing that cavalcade of characters interacting, for me, is primal. And yet, it is disheartening to me that Muppet became synonymous with literary adaptations in the last decade and a half, not to mention ever-dwindling box office returns. I am as weary and wary as many at BOP about the endless tide of reboots, reimaginings, relaunchings and franchise rebirths that Hollywood continues to surf but I am excited for Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller's planned revitalization for the characters. Segel plays the man-child convincingly in his performances and would seem an apt personality to bring the Muppets back to being adult entertainment that kids can also enjoy.

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