A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa

[BillBrasky]

This new Muppets special airs tonight on NBC at 8 PM EST.

Instead of being written by the usual Jim Henson people, it looks like the special was written by Hugh Fink, Scott Ganz, and Andrew Samson, who were all writers for "The Showbiz Show with David Spade". Between this and the upcoming Jason Segel/Nicholas Stoller Muppet movie, it looks like Disney is trying to "hip"ify the Muppets a little bit.

Anyway, guest stars include Jane Krakowski, Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Uma Thurman, Steve Schirripa, and Paul Williams.

[priceyeah]

Between this and the upcoming Jason Segel/Nicholas Stoller Muppet movie, it looks like Disney is trying to "hip"ify the Muppets a little bit.

Anyway, guest stars include Jane Krakowski, Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Uma Thurman, Steve Schirripa, and Paul Williams.

Reminds me of this interesting comment I saw a couple of months ago, about how Sesame Street is also clearly going for the 25-40 demographic.

[crlygrl]

Reminds me of this interesting comment I saw a couple of months ago, about how Sesame Street is also clearly going for the 25-40 demographic.

Yeah but I think, at least in terms of its musical segments and some of the jokes, that Sesame Street always kept parents in mind as well as children. So it makes sense that you'd see jokes and things that people in that demographic could relate to. Lots of kids shows do that these days.

I'm sad I'm going to miss this tonight. I love muppets.

[bao]

The muppets have always been hip. Or is it just me? The Muppets and Bugs Bunny are the two things from my childhood that I continue to enjoy unironically and un-nostalgically, and I would prefer if they didn't remake either.

[BillBrasky]

I just realized that Jerry Juhl, who wrote all the Muppet movies from "The Muppet Movie" all the way to "Muppets from Space" in 1999, passed away in 2005. So really, there aren't many of the original Henson staffers left.

[man124]

I love the muppets, so I am very excited for this. I just hope it is better then the muppet wizard of oz or studio dc, both of which are pretty terrible.

[olwiggum]

I don't remember being fond of Muppet Treasure Island, but I loved the hell out of Muppets From Space. I worked in a video store when it was released and would always use it as the go-to movie for the instore TVs.
I just watched The Muppet Movie again with my son a month or so ago and it still kicks ass.

[crlygrl]

My fiance is dancing to "The Rainbow Connection" for the mother-son dance at our wedding.

*sniff*

[jon]

You just wanted to mention that you're getting married again.

(You're mentioning it again, not you're getting married again.)


Also, on the point of being hip, I think the article referenced above was about how the Muppets were trying to appeal to that (my) age group because they have to. "The Muppets" doesn't mean anything as a brand (for lack of a better term) to young kids these days. Little kids would rather watch/buy stuff with characters they recognize rather than something that's not quite a mop and not quite a puppet (but man...) A few age groups up, though, knows and loves the Muppets, so appealing to them is much more a business decision in many ways now than "hey let's try to write jokes that parents can get."

Edit: Here's the article I meant, from September, about how Disney is trying to solve the problem through marketing.

[Mindyjoy]

This was really bad.

[man124]

Wow, this was bad. The voices of the muppets were all off and the mouths weren't matching the dialogue at all for some reason. In particular, the person doing the current voice of Kermit needs to be taken into a back alley and beaten senseless. Seriously, how hard is it to do a good Kermit voice? and what the fuck was up with the swedish chef using a complete sentence? It's as if the people who wrote this have never actually seen the muppet show or the muppet movie. I just feel sad now.

[Mindyjoy]

Jeez, it wasn't THAT bad.

[Margaret Dumont]

At least Pepe was funny.

[BillBrasky]