A quibble about the (very good) new Muppets movie

Years ago I cringed when I saw that the Onion sells a t-shirt with the slogan, "I appreciate
the Muppets on a much deeper level than you." My friend John
and I had just been discussing the Muppets' sly use of metafictional
elements--and it wasn't the first time we'd had this conversation. (We also
used to sing "What's the Buzz?" from Jesus
Christ Superstar, he as Kermit-as-Jesus and I as Piggy-as-Mary Magdalene.
Guess which pastime entertained our friends more.)

Maybe America's Finest News
Source is right: maybe it's silly to analyze the Muppets. But it's interesting
that the Onion headline behind the
t-shirt appears above a commentary disdainful of everything that came
out after The Muppet Movie, the
first feature film. The new movie The
Muppets, which Nadia and I saw yesterday, begins from this same premise.

The Muppets that screenwriters
Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller want to revive are the crew that produced a
variety show for several years and then starred as themselves in a classic road movie
about going to Hollywood and making it big. The implicit message: things went
downhill fast in the films that followed, and it's time to right the ship.