The Great Muppet Caper (1981) – DVD

***½/**** Image B Sound B-
starring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo
screenplay by Tom Patchett & Jay Tarses and Jerry Juhl & Jack Rose
directed by Jim Henson

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by Bill Chambers Jim Henson said that The Great Muppet Caper was the Muppet movie nearest and dearest to his heart, and it’s little mystery why. For starters, it’s the only one of the original trilogy he officially directed. And it’s closer in execution to “The Muppet Show”, Henson’s surreal, Emmy-winning brainchild that ran on TV for five years, than either The Muppet Movie or The Muppets Take Manhattan in not only showcasing a wide variety of song styles and involving the human guest stars in the musical performances, but also framing itself as what it is: a movie. With tongue firmly in cheek, The Great Muppet Caper deconstructs itself all the while. The film taught me a lot about the cinema–conventions, techniques, genre–as a kid, for which I am grateful.

Take the retort Miss Piggy spits at the suitor who betrays her just moments after serenading her: “You were dubbed!” Consider the somewhat existential prologue, featuring Gonzo (voice of Dave Goelz), Fozzie Bear (Frank Oz), and Kermit the Frog (Henson) encountering the onscreen titles in the sky as they float in a hot-air balloon and asking each other what terms like “B.S.C.” mean. (Aside: it’s an acronym for “British Society of Cinematographers.”) Their balloon ride climaxes with the introductory song “Hey A Movie!,” whose choreography wears a heavy Fame influence and whose lyrics itemize the ingredients of the film you’re about to watch, trailer-like, stopping just short of giving the whole thing away. (“There’ll be mystery/And catastrophe/But it’s all in fun/You paid the money/wait and see!”) The biggest musical numbers in The Great Muppet Caper lampoon some kind of cultural touchstone, culminating in Miss Piggy (Oz) and Kermit doing Fred and Ginger (“The First Time It Happens”) and Miss Piggy paying homage to Esther Williams water ballets (“Piggy’s Fantasy”). (The Great Muppet Caper rode the tail end of a wave of ’30s nostalgia.)

Is that all The Great Muppet Caper is? A veritable jukebox with a gossamer fourth wall? Well, sorta, yet that suffices, and as Kermit’s opening lyric in “Hey A Movie!” suggests, the film has added dimension for kids: “There’ll be spectacle/there’ll be fantasy/there’ll be derring-do and stuff that you/have never seen.” Certainly stuff that you have never seen the Muppets do, like swimming and going to prison. Before one develops a sense of irony, The Great Muppet Caper is a sincerely riveting heist flick, with Kermit and co. facing off against a formidable foe in cat burglar Nicky (a very funny and very game Charles Grodin). I’d compare it, in this regard, to “Scooby-Doo”‘s versatility with child audiences, the youngest of whom treat it as authentic horror.

The film is set in Great Britain, where “identical twin” crime reporters Fozzie and Kermit are sent on assignment, although indigenous accents prove scarce. (Twins, with Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito, really wasn’t breaking new ground.) Grodin plays the brother of hoity-toity fashion designer Lady Holiday (Diana Rigg) but makes no attempt to speak like her. Asked why he doesn’t have an accent, another American-sounding character, the furry cabbie and alleged British native Beauregard (Goelz), replies, “I’m lucky to have a driver’s license!” The filmmakers effectively teach kids to let this stuff go–hey(, it’s) a movie. And still and all, The Great Muppet Caper is a foam-filled love letter to England, where “The Muppet Show” was shot thanks to the patronage of Sir Lew Grade, and Henson’s direction reflects a casual intimacy with the land and its people. On that note, John Cleese cameos as a hilariously unflappable snob.

THE DVD
Columbia TriStar’s DVD release of The Great Muppet Caper is a flipper that showcases a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen version on side one and a cropped/pan-and-scan abomination on side two. The transfer is nice if imperfect, owing to it looking overly processed. Colours and black levels are magnificent, however; viewing this DVD against Disney’s LaserDisc from several years back, I was struck by a heretofore-unseen Technicolor whimsy in Oswald Morris’s cinematography. Kermit practically leaps off the screen, pun half-intended.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix opens up the score a bit, though the greatest improvement is evident with dialogue, which sounds less brittle than it used to. I’m not a fan of the 2.0 surround track that’s also included–it’s flat, thin audio of early-Eighties character. Columbia offers limited extra features: trailers for Elmo’s Adventure in Grouchland, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and Muppets From Space, plus three Muppetisms (koans conveyed in 30-seconds by spastic Muppets) starring Kermit the Frog and Floyd, Statler and Waldorf, and Animal by himself. One hopes in vain for a Special Edition that includes the TV special that aired as cross-promotion for the film, “The Muppets Go to the Movies”.

98 minutes; G; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, French DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Columbia TriStar