wakka wakka

I was feeling a little cynical about the new Muppets movie when I heard about it a year or so ago. I just saw it however and while there is WAY too much of the human story in it, I could also see how much Jason Segel used the Walter character as a pure kind of fan and put in how he himself related to the Muppets. It is a movie that leans heavily on nostalgia, sentiment, and not a little schmaltz, but it totally got to me. And it's actually funny for the most part. What great comedy doesn't KIND OF suck for the last 5 minutes when it has to get down to the business of resolving plot points?
I also saw it with someone who was 27 and never watched the show and her comments were along the lines of "it's super cute, but I didn't get a lot of it, I didn't enjoy it as much as you did." Which I wonder if that's how most of the actual children taken to this felt, while their parents were bawling to "Rainbow Connection."
I could break down part of my love for the franchise as the last remaining part of my childhood that is somewhat intact after the Star Wars series was completely gutted of all meaning in the past decade. I had no expectations for a Smurf movie, and they were somewhat met. The Smurfs movie had jokes, and they were more meta than I thought, but they were in the end, jokes about how shitty of a movie they were making. And the Smurfs had no inner life.
The part where I'll cry, and I rarely cry at movies, was when Kermit is wandering through his house singing and looking at the portraits of all his friends. I don't think any of the old films or anything else Muppet-related invested that much into a backstory for him. He has never been my favorite Muppet in the same way that how the fuck can Mickey Mouse ever be your favorite character? He's the boring center and the straight man. His sincerity is the most consistent thing about him.
The movie on the whole seems to be pitching itself as an antidote to reality television and being jaded, by going so over the top with its diegetic jokes. It's a pop cultural love letter that could just coast on accumulated goodwill, but it becomes a greater statement about humility and celebrity and vulnerability in surprising ways. It's just too bad Segel and the other writers felt the need to shoehorn so much of their subplot in.
I haven't been following Segel too much, but if there's a throughline to his persona, I could see it from his character on Freaks and Geeks insisting he was going to sing a song he wrote for Lindsay, not realizing it was terrible. Seth Rogen ends up saving his dignity somewhat by smashing the guitar, but Segel's thing, as it were, is overcommitment. In this case, he poured all of that into the writing of the movie. I love Amy Adams in most things, The Fighter particularly. She does a better job at being a Muppet-y human than he does. These are minor caveats though. If you go into a kids' movie expecting fine human acting, it will be a hard road.