I don't think anyone expected this Muppet remake of the classic Judy Garland movie to be better than the original, or even as good as the original. But I don't think anyone expected it to be this far below it, either.
I like the Muppets, and I'm not a kid. I saw "The Great Muppet Caper" not too long ago, and I actually enjoyed it, and I watched the old Muppet TV show regularly. So I figured that a remake of the "Wizard of Oz", Muppet-style, would be enjoyable. Brother, was I wrong.
There are a host of problems with this film. To begin with, there's Ashanti. Her, to put it gently, "inexperience" as an actress shows in every frame. The best you can say for her is that she's bland. She has virtually no chemistry with the other performers--even Jeffrey Tambor in his relatively small on screen time clicks with them far better than she does--she doesn't dance very well (or, thankfully, very often) and while she sings OK, the songs are about as colorless as her performance, although one of them somehow wound up with an Emmy nomination. The script is weak, many of the jokes are lame, the CGI effects are mediocre--as another poster has mentioned, they should gone with Muppets instead of the cheesy CGI characters--and what in God's name is Quentin Tarantino doing in it? David Alan Grier is amusing and makes the most of what little time he has, and Queen Latifah seems a bit more at ease than she usually is, but overall this is the weakest of all the Muppet movies I've seen.
I like the Muppets, and I'm not a kid. I saw "The Great Muppet Caper" not too long ago, and I actually enjoyed it, and I watched the old Muppet TV show regularly. So I figured that a remake of the "Wizard of Oz", Muppet-style, would be enjoyable. Brother, was I wrong.
There are a host of problems with this film. To begin with, there's Ashanti. Her, to put it gently, "inexperience" as an actress shows in every frame. The best you can say for her is that she's bland. She has virtually no chemistry with the other performers--even Jeffrey Tambor in his relatively small on screen time clicks with them far better than she does--she doesn't dance very well (or, thankfully, very often) and while she sings OK, the songs are about as colorless as her performance, although one of them somehow wound up with an Emmy nomination. The script is weak, many of the jokes are lame, the CGI effects are mediocre--as another poster has mentioned, they should gone with Muppets instead of the cheesy CGI characters--and what in God's name is Quentin Tarantino doing in it? David Alan Grier is amusing and makes the most of what little time he has, and Queen Latifah seems a bit more at ease than she usually is, but overall this is the weakest of all the Muppet movies I've seen.