Review: The Muppets

7-word review for the ADD-afflicted: A feature-length love letter to the Muppets.

70-word review for the busy: The Muppets’ best film in 20 years is—fittingly enough—a movie about reviving the Muppets. It runs thick with nostalgia, drawing whole songs and plot points from past Muppet efforts. But the new additions—including two protagonists who are lifelong Muppet fans—are delightful.  And if the middle of The Muppets drags a bit, it’s only because the rest of the film hums with electricity – and with hummable songs.

While usually we offer a 700-word review for the procrastinators, that meager length is clearly inadequate for a movie as monumental as The Muppets. Instead, in the coming days we will publish 7 cultural essays for the Muppet-obsessed, on topics including the following:

• The Muppets Go Meta: Even This Title Is Self-Aware
• Old-School Muppets vs. New-School Muppets: The Conflict That Wasn’t
• Lost Generation: How I Survived a Muppet Ice Age, and Lived to Tell the Tale
• Life’s a Snappy Song: The Music of the Muppets
• Muppet and Man: An Ancient Symbiosis
• The World’s Greatest Muppet Video Timeline
• The Muppet Connection: The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me