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“The Muppets” A PeaceBang Review

Of course I loved it. I was raised on the Muppets, and remember the very first ever episode of “Sesame Street,” which replaced my favorite show at the time, “Kimba the White Lion.”

“The Muppets” (2011) is a charming movie about the Muppets. You don’t need to know the plot – it’s the same thing you’ve seen many times. The Muppets are in danger of losing their theatre, so they have to reunite for a big fundraising show.

The two main characters are Gary (Jason Segal) and Walter (a muppet) who is Gary’s brother who doesn’t quite know if he’s a muppet or a man. Gary has a girlfriend named Mary, played by the always-charming Amy Adams.

I get that the movie is a bit retro in its attitudes, as it’s trying to keep things innocent and fresh. I appreciate that. What I did not appreciate, however, is that the screenplay makes a strong point that women are nothing without their men (or frog, as the case may be). Really, Muppets? In 2012? In 2012, the female character can’t go out for the day by herself or eat lunch by herself without falling into despair about it (and singing a big musical number about it)? Her big first number has to voice her ultimate (and apparently only) desire that her boyfriend marry her?

Male characters in this movie have dreams. They make things happen. They save the theatre, and find their talent. The ladies just go along for the ride and complain about not getting the guy. After the muppets save the theatre and treat us to a big, happy ensemble number, the movie comes to a satisfying conclusion. However, just to emphasize the point that all happiness comes from gettin’ yer man, the film adds a penultimate scene with Gary getting down on one knee and proposing to Mary. Blergh.

Worse than “The Muppets'” inability to envision a self-respecting 21st century human female character (Rashida Jones gets to play the other female role of the stereotypical cold-hearted Career Gal, all business suits and Blackberry) is its treatment of the glorious Miss Piggy, porcine diva extraordinaire.

When the muppets go to find Miss Piggy to bring her back to the theater for the show, we find out that she is living in Paris and has the dream job of all time: plus-size fashion editor at Vogue!!  The funniest scene in the movie features the fabulous Emily Blunt (in a wink to her role as the assistant to Miranda Priestley in “The Devil Wears Prada”) imperiously blocking entrance to Miss Piggy’s ultra-glam office. When we see Piggy, she is a vision in Chanel (although stuffing her face with donuts):

Miss Piggy is living the dream! She’s not wasting her life away at a dive bar in Reno like Fozzy or wiling away her days in a gated mansion like her old paramour, Kermit. Piggy is important, successful and happy.

However, in what I’m sure most people thought was a throwaway moment, Kermit confesses to Miss Piggy that he misses her and needs her, and asks her to stay in Hollywood “for him.” Without hesitation, Piggy squeals, “Of course, Kermie.”

Are you kidding!? Piggy!! Who let that dialogue happen? She should have said, “Oh, Kermie, come with me to PARIS!” Then, voila, set-up for a Muppet movie in France!

I don’t care if these are puppets with plastic eyes, when you hear parents say things like, “I plan to raise my kids on this movie,” it’s worth paying attention to the messages that the movie communicates. And this movie clearly communicates that girls have no desires apart from being with their guys, and that no matter how amazing a gal’s life ever gets, she’ll be willing to drop it all in a heartbeat (and leave Paris! Paris!!) the second her guy asks her to.

I love my Muppets and I loved all the references to 1986. I just wish that they could have written a screenplay that didn’t have such a throwback treatment of female characters. Our little girls deserve better.

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“A Dangerous Method” A PeaceBang Review

I had such high expectations for “A Dangerous Method” that I drove 45 minutes to see it. How could it miss!? Director David Cronenberg, a genius in directing films about the perversion in human minds and bodies, the brilliant Christopher Hampton — author of “Dangerous Liaisons” — penning the screenplay, and starring the impeccably cast Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud?

The problem with this film is structural. Although Hampton and Cronenberg had a rich universe of psycho-sexual, imaginal and mystical material to work with, they chose to tell the story in a strictly chronological, narrative fashion. The end result was, for me, an artistic betrayal of the subject matter in favor of a sedate drawing room drama with a skotsch of kink. As the film unfolds with scene after scene of people sitting at breakfast and talking, walking through gardens and talking, sitting in perfectly appointed studies and talking, it is left entirely to Keira Knightley, as the neurotic Sabina Spielrein, to deliver the sense of depth, passion and crazy innate to the human soul that Jung and Freud were trying to treat with their pioneering “talking cure.”

Perhaps another actress might have done a better job conveying the torments of a woman in the grip of hysterical neurosis than Knightley, but she is thoroughly unconvincing in the early scenes of the film, chewing scenery and contorting her mouth and hands to show her mental anguish. She might have been helped by some flashbacks or some directorial flourish to tell the story, but she, and we, are left only with her Extreme Emoting. She does her best, but Cronenberg and Hampton should be sued for artistic negligence.

Fassbender and Mortensen are wonderful in their scenes as Herr Doktor Freud and his disciple, playing out the archetypal drama of the Senex and Puer as they first become spiritual and professional father and son, then rivals, and finally enemies. Hampton contributes his best writing to these scenes and the two men generate enough psychic intensity through their performances to give us a sense of the enormity of this conflict both for them and for the field of psychoanalysis.

I quipped on the way home that I felt like dressing up in white petticoats, smoking a cigar and spanking Michael Fassbender. “A Dangerous Method” is a good-enough movie, but for those who know the work of Jung, Freud, Cronenberg and Hampton, it is bound to be a major disappointment.

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Worship Resource

Oh, have I got a treat for you!!

Resources for Preaching And Worship Year A: Quotations, Mediations, Poetry and Prayers

Compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild

Westminster John Knox Press

You kin get it here!

Further supporting my argument that the Holy Spirit’s insistent ecumenical energy is working everywhere nowadays, this gorgeous resource (with the boring title, it must be admitted) includes readings and poetry from a variety of sources, many secular and even a few non-Western. It’s a little treasure trove, I’m telling you, and organized by Sundays in the lectionary year.

I picked it up in Oxford and here’s me reading it all the way home on the bus going, “OHMYGOD I LOVE this!” And “Oh, wow, what a great reading” and “MAN, this is so awesome” and all manner of American stupid utterances until the guy sitting across the aisle goes, “May I ask what it is you’re reading?” and I show it to him and he says, “Well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen better proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

It doesn’t look very sexy but I am loving it. Everything from Augustine to Oscar Romero to contemporary British women poets (lots of them, in fact). And lots of references to the arts, which of course speaks to my soul.

Enjoy!