Director: James Bobin
Running Time: 103 mins
Certificate: U
Release Date: June 11th, 2012
Disney bought The Muppets from the Jim Henson Company back in 2004, realising that with their long-lasting popularity, they might be a good addition to the Disney universe. However since then the House Of Mouse hasn’t seemed entirely sure what to do with them. While they’ve tried several things over the years, the problem seems to have been Disney trying to shoehorn the characters into the way they deal with their other properties, rather than letting them be themselves.
It’s one of the reason The Muppets works so well, as it realises that Kermit & co. live in a netherworld between children’s and adult’s entertainment, where nostalgia is as important as silly jokes for kids. Likewise it acknowledges that part of the reason for the characters’ success is the fine line they walk between absurdity and realism, which works due to an absolute commitment to the idea Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear are real, while everything around them has a self-referential wink. [Read more…]
It’s a bit of a good news/bad news scenario, as 
If Hollywood was hoping for a little pre-Christmas cheer, it didn’t get much over the weekend, after disappointing debuts for two movies there’d been high hopes for. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows topped the chart with $40 million, more than $20 million down on the first movie’s take during Christmas 2009. It’s even lower than Tron: Legacy, which opened to weak reviews this weekend last year.
The idea that lightning can strike in the same place twice took a hit over the weekend, with New Year’s Eve, the star-studded follow-up to Valentine’s Day, topping the US box ofice but with a very tepid $13.7 million. With a cast that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Hilary Swank and Seth Meyer, Warner Bros had been expecting it to make over $20 million, especially since it’s predecessor opened to $72 million 18 months ago.
It was quite an unusual week at the US box office, as no new movies at all made it into the top 10, with older film merely shifting around a little. Things remained exactly the same at the top though, with Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 in the number 1 slot, despite dropping 60% from last weekend to $16.9 million, while The Muppets stayed at number 2 with an $11.2 million weekend gross.