Muppets’ Wizard of Oz, The (2005)

Posted on Aug 31, 2005 under Comedy, Fantasy, Kidvid |

Directed by Kirk R. Thatcher
Written by Debra Frank, Steve Hayes, Tom Martin, and Adam F. Goldberg, based on the novel by L. Frank Baum
Starring
- Steve Whitmire
- Dave Goelz
- Eric Jacobson
- Bill Barretta
Produced by Martin G. Baker and Warren Carr
Executive produced by Brian Henson and Lisa Henson

I don’t think there’s been an entertainer who’s died in my lifetime that I’ve missed like I’m missed Jim Henson. That’s right, even more than DeForrest Kelley or Jimmy Doohan; they’re memorable work was solidly behind them, but Henson was still in his creative prime. He’s been gone, what, fifteen years now? And still the hole left by his absence goes unfilled. The man was a genius, pure and simple. And if there’s a tell-all book out there detailing how he cheated on his wife and beat his kids and wiped boogers on the back of TV Guide, I don’t want to know about it. In Nathan’s Personal Book of Saints, Jim Henson has long been canonized as Patron Saint of Entertainment, and speaking ill of him will get you sent to hell.

When Henson died, it looked as if the Muppets might fade into the mists of nostalgia. But then longtime Muppeteer Steve Whitmire turned out to do a pretty passable Kermit/Ernie voice. Frank Oz, Henson’s often-unacknowledged co-genius, was still around. And there was considerable pop-cultural goodwill to be had; Kermit the Frog was seen as an icon of childhood entertainment almost on a level with Mickey Mouse, and without the connotations of media imperialism and rumors about cryogenically-preserved heads.

When The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) was released, it was almost more important simply that they had made a movie. Jim’s legacy would continue. The story was something of a softball — take a beloved tale and cast it with the Muppet characters — but it was exactly what the Muppets needed: A vehicle to let the world know they were still around.

Then Muppet Treasure Island (1996) came out, and my heart began to falter. Surely, there was more left to the Muppet legacy than simply recasting public-domain stories. Yes, that had been a part of the Muppet “shtick” at least since 1972’s “Frog Prince” TV Special (”Bake the hall in the candle of her brain!”), but it wasn’t the overriding element of said shtick.

Muppets From Space (1999) provided a welcome change from that recurring pattern, giving us an original storyline (and an all-disco soundtrack as an alternative to musical numbers — an interesting and gutsy choice, really). It also cemented the idea that Kermit and the other characters that Henson had voiced could really no longer take center stage in Muppet productions; not only was Whitmire not quiiiiiite right as Kermit, but that essential chemistry between Henson and Frank Oz — found in Ernie/Bert, Kermit/Fozzie, Kermit/Piggy, Statler/Waldorff, etc. — simply wasn’t there. The idea of moving Kermit out of the spotlight was actually part of the premise of the short-lived Muppets Tonight TV series (1996), in which Gonzo, Rizzo the Rat, and new character Clifford were the hubs of the series, with Kermit dropping by occasionally like an elder statesman.

Makes Judy Garland look like a Pollyanna, doesn’t she?

All of which brings us to the current era of the Muppets franchise, one dominated by TV-movies and the encroachment of mediocrity. Frank Oz no longer performs with them, his parts both in Muppet productions and on Sesame Street having been taken over by Eric Jacobson. A less visible but no less important absence behind the camera is that of Jerry Juhl, head writer on The Muppet Show and contributor to every Muppet theatrical project, who retired after Muppets From Space. With the heart of the Muppets leaching out over the years, how well can they recapture that old magic?

Especially when you consider that adapting The Wizard of Oz is a lot tougher than it looks.

To most viewers today, the 1939 MGM production of The Wizard of Oz is the definitive version of the story. Never mind that L. Frank Baum had written the book back in 1900, or that he had produced several silent films based on books in the series; the version of the story presented in the 1939 movie has become more “original” than the original in the minds of the viewing public. I would assume that most people intimately familiar with Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, et al would be surprised not only at those elements of the book which were left out of the movie, but also at those story ideas which were added to the movie. Dorothy feeling unappreciated and running away? Not in the book. The journey to Oz all being a dream? Not in the book. People in Kansas corresponding to characters in Oz? Not in the book. All of which means that the great thematic heart of the movie, Dorothy’s appreciation for a home that she had sought to escape, just isn’t in the book.

So anybody making a later adaptation of the book has to balance two warring impulses: to tell the story without relying too heavily on MGM’s proprietary additions to the book, while also keeping the unfamiliar elements in the book from overwhelming the sought-after sense of familiarity in the viewing audience. That latter is especially true in a version such as this, when the familiarity of the story is meant to be one of the movie’s strengths.

“Hey, a scarecrow who almost sounds like Jim Henson but not quite!”

Well, here’s our first similarity: a young chanteuse in the role of Dorothy. (Another legacy of the MGM version; Shirley Temple, originally sought for the role of Dorothy, would have better matched the age of the protagonist in the book, but because the role went to the seventeen-year-old Judy Garland, the Dorothy of popular imagination has become a much older lass, though still an innocent.) This time around, Dorothy Gale is played by Ashanti. If you’re like me, you immediately said, “Who?” But even the pseudo-African singular name tells you what you need to know: a young, generic soul-pop idol trying to extend her fifteen minutes. And even if you didn’t clue in that far at reading the credits, you soon will when the movie starts — with a music video, as Ashanti/Dorothy sings a melody-less little whine about needing to get out of small-town Kansas. I know that, being an anti-fan of what has inappropriately been called “soul” music for the last twenty years, I should confine my comments on the music to a minimum, so I’ll leave it at this: nothing here will overshadow your memory of the songs used in the 1939 version. In fact, it will serve to heighten your appreciation.

This Dorothy Gale works in the diner run by her Aunt Em (Queen Latifah) and Uncle Henry (David Alan Grier), but she really wants to be, you guessed it, a singer. (It always amazes me when pop stars try to expand their career by appearing in movies, only to play roles tailored to keep from stretching their image at all.) She even has an audition today, to perform for the Muppets themselves, who are conducting a nation-wide talent search. Unfortunately, because of her kitchen duties, she misses the audition, and has only a moment to press a demo CD into Kermit’s flipper as the tour bus pulls out.

She goes to pout in the family’s double-wide trailer afterward, her only company being a king prawn named Toto in a fishbowl. But her woe-is-me-fest is interrupted by a tornado, and when she pauses to save Toto, she gets caught in the twister and delivered to Oz.

Toto the king prawn immediately grows into Pepe (for those of you who haven’t been following the various Muppet incarnations for the last decade, Pepe’s a king prawn puppet, voiced by Bill Barretta). The Munchkins are Rizzo (Steve Whitmire) and his fellow rats; and the Wicked Witch of the East, crushed by the doublewide, is Miss Piggy (Eric Jacobson). Miss Piggy is also the Good Witch of the North, who gives Dorothy the silver shoes (not ruby slippers — that was an innovation of the MGM movie) and sets her on her quest to the Emerald City. And why does Dorothy want to see the Wizard? Not because she wants to get home; because the Good Witch says that the Wizard can make Dorothy a singing star. Yeah, that’s a motivation the audience will really identify with.

As in the book, Dorothy actually doesn’t attract the attention of the Wicked Witch of the West until after she’s been to the Emerald City, so she sets out and starts collecting companions:

- Kermit (Steve Whitmire) as the Scarecrow, played the straightest of any of her traveling buddies. (Notable, though, is the fact that the puppet’s head is made out of something with a burlap-like weave instead of felt.)

It’s not easy seeing green.

- Gonzo (Dave Goelz) as the TIN Thing. That’s “Total Information Network”; taking its cues from the backstory in the book that the Witch had caused the woodsman to replace his entire body with tin, this movie has the TIN Thing as a cyborged sysop, running the Witch’s Oz-wide computer network. It’s a nifty idea, and it’s never mentioned again. One might think that some sign of a LAN-enabled OZ would be forthcoming, or maybe even a subplot with the TIN Thing being an unwilling turncoat under the Witch’s control. But no; anything innovative or interesting in this scene stays in this scene.

- Fozzie (Eric Jacobsen) as the Cowardly Lion — an aspiring stand-up comic with stage fright.

Together they face a few perils of the forest, such as the Kalidah beasts from the book (here played by the Hecklers) and of course the veiled warning against the allures of opium — though instead of a field of poppies, it’s a nightclub called Poppyfield’s. When the Munchkins show up and rescue them from the poppies’ influence, it becomes clear that having the Munchkins be played by the rat Muppets allows them to be conflated with the Queen of the field mice and her subjects, who rescued the travelers from the poppies in the book.

Once they reach the Emerald City, elements from the book again come to the forefront: They are made to wear special green glasses like everyone in Oz — dispensed by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (Dave Goelz) and Beaker (Steve Whitmire), of course — and when they enter to see Oz one by one, the wizard appears to each in a different form. Dorothy’s quest is also different, as in the book Oz had given her the task of killing the Witch outright — none of this broomstick falderall. That’s still apparently too bloody, so this time Dorothy is tasked with retrieving the Witch’s magic false eye, which can see far and wide.

The Witch, of course, is once again Miss Piggy, decked out in biker’s duds. And the flying monkeys? This obviously isn’t one of those Muppets production in which they shell out for a bunch of custom puppets, so instead all of the monstrous Muppets, including Sweetums, are part of a biker gang called The Flying Monkeys, who ride their flying motorcycles to trap Dorothy and her friends.

And they already used the “hog on a hog” gag in the script, so I got nothing.

Yada yada yada, Dorothy defeats the witch and brings back the eye, the Wizard turns out to be Jeffrey Tambor behind a lot of FX equipment, but he grants them their wishes anyway on live television. Dorothy realizes belatedly that instead of being a star, she’d just rather be home (a thought which had, to that point, not reared its head at all), and they travel back to Munchkinland to finally meet the final Good Witch (Piggy, natch), who tells Dorothy about the magic footwear.

Presto, a glittering cyclone delivers her back to Kansas, where not only have Aunt Em and Uncle Henry made peace with her dreams of stardom, but the Muppets totally groove on her demo CD and invite her aboard the tour bus. The end.

I rushed those last few paragraphs not only because I was getting bored of typing (though I was), but because the movie had gotten threadbare for me by that point. Lack of any sort of sympathetic theme sapped the climax of its impact; rather than having Dorothy’s homecoming be the cap to an emotional journey, it came across more as a bit of obligatory family-friendly glurge. There’s a half-hearted attempt at a statement about the hollowness and artificiality of show business (in counterpoint to the paean to Hollywood in The Muppet Movie), but it seems like only one or two of the credited screenwriters knew it was supposed to be in there.

Plus… it’s just not very funny. There’s plenty of forced cleverness, but little of the genuine humor which Jim Henson had mastered so well, or even the vaudevillean shtick from The Muppet Show. There were exactly two points at which I laughed, and they both relied on the viewer’s knowledge of the movie’s precedents to be funny.

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Okay, fine, I’ll tell you what they were: 1) As Dorothy is ready to set out on the yellow brick road, Toto turns to the camera and tells us to start Dark Side of the Moon now. 2) As Oz declares himself to Kermit the Scarecrow, he replies, “Any relation to Frank Oz?”

That’s it. Those were the high points. There’s also a cutaway to Quentin Tarantino pitching a tremendous hand-to-hand kung-fu-and-katanas fight scene between Dorothy and the Witch to a deskbound Kermit, a scene that is reduced in the movie to a single kick. And then there’s the Scarecrow, while still tied to his pole, making a Passion of the Christ quip. That one had me scratching my head and asking, “Who, exactly, did they think their audience was?”

Oz is ruled by — an internet geek!

Even Muppets on the cheap can be entertaining; witness some of the TV specials Henson spearheaded in the days before The Muppet Movie. But this attempt simply has no overarching vision; instead, it looks like the first draft of the screenplay used as much of the book as it could, only to have elements of the MGM version overlaid during the development process, and then rewritten again to showcase and stroke the star. It lacks cohesion. It lacks unity.

It lacks Jim Henson.

We miss you, Jim.