In ‘The Muppets Mayhem’, the charm is in the blandness

“Why is this suddenly all about me?” Nora (Lilly Singh) is yelling at a cameraman in a stuffy room. And against a bunch of dolls, because the Muppet band Electric Mayhem is also present. Nora is the band’s manager and wants one rockumentary talk about the old hippie rockers, but the cameraman turns out to be more interested in Nora’s love affairs, which unexpectedly keep surfacing. “This is supposed to be about the band,” she exclaims, “about their love for each other. That’s the love the world needs to see, not mine.” Yet the camera remains focused on her, while the dolls silently watch her.

Do people still want to watch the Muppets in 2023? Yes, Disney hopes, which continues to try doggedly to revive the franchise in all sorts of ways. Lately with moderate success: recent attempts like the mockumentary series that simply The Muppets was called (2015-2016) and the more classic sketch show Muppets Now (2020) didn’t flop so much, but they didn’t stick either. Of The Muppets Mayhem Disney is now taking another tack: the title of the ten-part series may refer to the Muppet band Electric Mayhem (with drummer Animal as the most famous member), but the plot is actually mainly about the love life of their young human manager, Nora . She is convinced that her life is not getting off the ground and sees producing an album with Electric Mayhem as her big breakthrough. Meanwhile, unprocessed grief pops up from time to time about her father’s death, she argues endlessly with her sister and she also has to choose between two men: the somewhat dorky Mayhem superfan ‘Moog’ (Tahj Mowry) and the smooth businessman JJ (Anders Holm).

With that, everything has been said about the plot line of the human figures in The Muppets Mayhem, which remains quite flat and predictable. Now an average Muppet fan probably doesn’t expect psychologically complex characters either. You watch the Muppets for the diverse and exuberant characters of the large assortment of dolls, for the crazy voices, the quickly derailed humor and maybe a nice song in between. But by giving such prominence to human characters whose ups and downs the viewer has to empathize with, and by focusing attention on a relatively limited number of Muppets (Electric Mayhem’s bandmates with the occasional addition), fall The Muppets Mayhem just between two stools: one moment the series takes itself too seriously, the next you have a lot of silly jokes of the same caliber flying at you. Flower power muppet Janice in a floaty tone „for sure” hearing them say and seeing the old rock stars marvel at the wonders of the internet is funny a few times, but it doesn’t stay as much fun for ten episodes.

Moralistic

As far as the latter is concerned, the series sometimes feels very des Disney’s moralistic. The fact that Nora has to come to the realization that the band has an authentic value that you shouldn’t modernize too much with hip beats and TikTok videos is annoying rather than really funny: it is one of the lessons that Nora has learned in the past. sorrow must learn. This makes the series sometimes more like Sesame Street than an adult Muppet variety.

Yet there are also quite a few moments in which the original appeal of the Muppets shines through. The obligatory LSD trip for hippie parodies (although in this case it is dutifully caused by expired marshmallows) surprisingly produces some of the funniest scenes, with the cameo of Weird Al Yankovic leading the way. When his head, à la The Lion King, appears in the clouds to address one of the tripping band members, the viewer is briefly transported back to the original Muppets Show where it all started in 1967: the cameo is convincingly exaggerated, it is precisely in the blandness that there is also the charm. And as the series progresses, the focus shifts more and more from the humans to the Muppets. That immediately results in much nicer television and in some cases also new puppets, such as when the parents of lead singer Dr. Teeth suddenly appear at the door and an episode follows full of flashbacks to his youth. They are Muppets style over the topwithout attempts at heavy sentimentality: here the makers still manage to find a suitable tone.

Those successful moments – combined with the colorful setting, the musical interludes and the overwhelming number of cameos from big names such as Lil Nas X, Kesha and even Morgan Freeman – are enough to keep watching, even though they could have been condensed into one. a movie instead of being spread out over ten episodes. Then many of the less compelling storylines could have been omitted. Because even as a viewer you regularly ask yourself: why is it suddenly all about Nora? That reinforces the idea that Disney has still not completely cracked the success formula of the Muppets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCsA_eOOcuc