On the surface, this appears to be a remake of The Great Muppet Caper. With Hollywood being too scared to do anything original, rebooting everything from a successful franchise’s past is the norm. The easiest example is the steaming turd Star Trek Into Darkness was as it remade Wrath of Khan. Not so with Wanted. The premise is obviously illustrated in the trailer, Kermit is replaced by an evil impostor who uses the Muppet Show as cover for stealing priceless treasures. It bears some resemblance to Caper about as much as Jimmy Neutron does to Dexter’s Laboratory.
It has the usual elements: musical numbers, celebrity cameos and inside jokes. Will it hold up over time? Probably. Younger generations may need someone to explain who the celebrities were and why were their appearances funny. That’s nothing new. The majority of them from 1979’s The Muppet Movie have passed away yet they remain funny.
The bigger question encompasses the core story though. I say it will with a resounding yes, more than Caper, Manhattan and Space. If the writers and director made Ricky Gervais tolerable for more than 10 minutes, I would say they succeeded. I personally can’t take him in large doses. Tina Fey and Ty Burrell I’m cool with.
I’m mostly glad Bret McKenzie returned to write songs for the key sequences, namely “I’ll Get You What You Want (Cockatoo in Malibu).”
Alamo Extras: Different commercials the Muppets did (since the last time we saw a Muppet-based film there), namely La Choy Chinese food and a PSA against tailgating; Jimmy Fallon, the Roots and the Muppets singing the Sesame Street Theme, something from the Ed Sullivan Show and a comedy bit demonstrating a robot gas-station worker.