The Muppets Take Manhattan

Dir: Frank Oz

1984

*****

The Muppets Take Manhattan was the third Muppet film and the last the great Jim Henson would be part of. I love all of the Muppet films, even the awful ones, but the original three combined are like a golden triangle to me that formed a huge part of my childhood and made me into the Muppet-obsessed adult that I am today. I will attack anyone (with a rubber chicken) who says that The Muppets Take Manhattan isn't as good as the first two, I would agree though that I like it least out of the three, although it is a masterpiece, so let’s leave it there (unless you want to be attacked with a rubber chicken?). Filmed on location in New York City during the summer of 1983, it was the first Muppet film to be directed solely by Frank Oz (AKA Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Animal the drummer). Jim Henson initially planned to direct but having directed The Great Muppet Caper and The Dark Crystal back-to-back, he decided to serve as the producer along with David Lazer. Upon selecting fellow Muppet performer and Dark Crystal co-director Frank Oz to handle directorial duties, Henson stated, "I was looking at the year ahead and I thought my life was very busy and I thought maybe it was a time to have Frank directing one of these."

 The first draft titled The Muppets: The Legend Continues, written by Muppet Caper scribes Jay Tarses and Tom Patchett, was dismissed by Oz for being "way too over jokey", but it would have been something I would have loved to have seen. After being given Henson's encouragement to tinker with the script, Oz revised the screenplay in an effort to develop the "oomph of the characters and their relationships". Once the script was completed and the sets were built, special consultant David Misch was brought in to write cameos for some guest star appearances. Originally, this list of guest stars contained the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Steve Martin, Michael Jackson, Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor and Laurence Olivier among many. According to Misch, Hoffman was going to play a Broadway producer and planned to do an imitation of legendary film producer Robert Evans (The Godfather), which he later did in the film Wag the Dog. However, at the last minute, Hoffman decided that the role could be offensive to Evans and dropped out, following which all the other big names dropped out as well. Because of the dropped cameos, Misch and director Oz ended up rewriting most of the film's dialogue. One could point at this as being the catalyst of one the Muppet's downfalls in later films. The Muppet Movie has one of the best cameo casts of all time. The Great Muppet Caper has a great Cameo cast too but the thing is, the Muppets never really needed them, they were just a bit of fun. Celebrities would do anything to appear with the Muppets but when the cameo thing became something the Muppets sought out as priority, it became less special. I wonder if this was a confidence thing, the Muppet people just not realizing why people loved them so? Still, the cameos were still good; Art Carney, James Coco, Dabney Coleman, Gregory Hines, Linda Lavin, Frances Bergen, Elliott Gould (his second Muppet film cameo), Mayor Edward I. Koch, John Landis, David Lazer, Liza Minnelli, Vincent Sardi Jr, Brooke Shields and Joan Rivers is an impressive line-up and each performance serves a purpose - with Rivers, Shields, Lavin and Hines being particularly good. There are some brilliant sketches within the story, Kermit with temporary memory loss is fantastic, from his medical examination with Linda Lavin to meeting advertising executives Bill, Gill and Jill, it's the Muppets at their funniest. The film also introduced the Muppet Babies, as toddler versions of the Muppet characters in a bizarre but brilliant fantasy sequence. The Muppet Babies later received their own Saturday morning animated television series, which aired from 1984 until 1991, which is enough reason to love Manhattan alone! It's more of a musical than the two previous films too, not because the music is any better or that there are more songs but mostly because it is about a musical itself. 2011's The Muppets was famous for winning the academy award for best original song but it wasn't the first Muppet song to have ever been nominated as Jeff Moss was nominated for his song score but just lost out to Prince for Purple Rain. The big reason Muppet fans favour Manhattan is because it is the film where we finally see Kermit and Piggy get married. The cast of Sesame Street, the whole Muppet crew and even the Fraggles are invited to the wedding and it's a great way to end the film. It also feels like a nice way for Jim Henson to have ended his Muppet film career on looking back at it now. It's wonderful, overlooked by Muppet and casual Muppet enthusiasts but it has plenty going for it and my childhood wouldn't have been the same without it.