Your Thoughts: The Muppets' Wizard of Oz

MWoO said:

But it wouldn't fit with what they were doing. They were 4 pig sisters, not a pig, anne sue pig, a chicken, and a human like character. So no, it owuld not be better if Janice played a witch and Camilla already had a role set. Plus she can't talk, so what kind of witch would she make?.

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She'd make a funny witch then, lol. I know the whole "sister" angle, it just bugged me they over-used Piggy and didn't take advantage of a few more of the minority female Muppets.

And, uh, note to Henson:

This is 2005, not 1984---lose the '80s ponytail on Janice! Jeez!

If they can update Piggy's hair with every project, they can certainly update Janice's once...

I think they'd have a riot on their hands if they updated Janice!

Jerry Nelson cameo?

I'm probably wrong...but there's someone in the audience in the following photo that looks like Jerry Nelson. See Dave? Okay, there's Steve Whitmire to the right of him...and look at that guy in the cowboy hat in the front row...could it be? The beard doesn't look quite right, and maybe it's just wishful thinking but...

Is this Jerry?

http://mfiles.scarecroe.com/oz/images/ozshot01.jpg

Convincing John

This was the worst waste of two hours in the history of mankind, and the saddest introduction of the Muppets to a new generation of small kids they could ever have come up with.

Too much potty/body-part humor, lowest-common-denominator-humor, and current day reference humor, all of which says We just couldn't craft a real script here so why bother. Lazy, lazy writing. Insults the viewer and demeans the puppets.

Tambor looked as if he was choking to death on the bad script, I don't blame him.

Too much reference to Manolos, double-wides, J. Lo, on and on ad nauseum. This is a cardinal sin in screenwriting - when relied on excessively a film will never stand the test of time. They keep trying way too hard to be hip. And it bores.

Puppets in pieces, Kermit's disembodied head on the ground, grotesque melting, gee, great way to turn on the little ones to the Muppets, oh yeah.

Weirdly, Whitmire gave his best Kermit voicing ever in the worst Muppet production ever.

What a sad, sad piece of trash.

*sigh*

It's sad that a movie this trashing is what brings everyone back to MC. Hello Beebers, it's been an eternity since we saw you last!

I'm really looking forward to seeing it--unfortunately, it's sitting on my Tivo in Iowa, and I'm 1000 miles away for another week. I'll have to avoid this discussion until then, but hopefully I'll see what you all have seen soon.

Hi Beau. (hugs)

Also, ditto to everything beaker said on Page 5 of this thread. Beaker, "the Abu Ghraib of Muppet films", excellent and right on. What a total trainwreck.

Beebers said:

Puppets in pieces, Kermit's disembodied head on the ground, grotesque melting, gee, great way to turn on the little ones to the Muppets, oh yeah.

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HeraLirambar said:

Am I the only person here who wasn't fazed by the decapitation scene? I guess since I knew they'd be alright in the end it didn't get to me.... okay, it weirded me out a bit.

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The decapitation scene didn't bother me at all. Remember the original Oz film? Now those flying monkeys were scary.

Neither did the "grotesque melting" bother me. In the original the witch melts there as well. Remember "I'm melting, I'm melting"? And I didn't think it was grotesque at all. It was actually done with humor. Miss Piggy at first thinks she is getting skinnier.

All-in-all the movie was good. The Muppte Movie good? No. But I think as Muppet fanatics we all tend to nit-pick too much. To the general public who aren't so fanatical I think it came across as a success. I had friends and co-workers over to watch it who aren't generally Muppet fans ( ) and they thought it was very humorous and fun.

I know the Oz story well, have read the books, and seen the old Judy Garland version many times. The content is part of the reason I felt that Oz was a poor choice as a project for the Muppets, because you cannot tell the story without those scenes and references, melting, poppies and whatnot. It's a weird book to begin with.

That said, this film exemplifies the willingness of writers and audiences to settle for low standards indeed.

Creepy scenes aside, it is still a massively bad film.