[5.2/10] What happened? If you zoom out, *The Muppets Take Manhattan* isn’t all that different from *The Great Muppet Caper*. Both movies feature the Muppets dashing off to some far-flung big city. (London and New York City, naturally.) Both movies have a barely-there plot that’s mainly an excuse to string set pieces together. (Foiling a jewel thief and staging a Broadway show.) Both pause for imagine spots and musical numbers.

The difference is -- *The Great Muppet Caper* is funny. Its musical interludes are memorable and entertaining. Its set pieces are big and impressive. Its characters are charming and likable. Its vibe is fun and enjoyable. *The Muppets Take Manhattan*...just isn’t.

I can’t tell you why that is. Half of the writing team returned from *Caper*. All of the key Muppet performers are there. Jim Henson took a step back but the celebrated Frank Oz took a step forward as both director and co-writer. The talent is ostensibly there to recreate the magic for a third time. But *The Muppets Take Manhattan* is practically bereft of pixie dust.

The movie follows the same loose structure of its predecessor, but can’t build enough gags to fill in the bare skeleton of its plot. The gang heads to New York to try to put their show, “Manhattan Melodies”, on Broadway. But confronted with shaking heads and slamming doors, they eventually go their separate ways, with Kermit feeling overwhelmed as the group’s unofficial leader, and the team worrying they put too much on his shoulders. Kermit runs around in the hopes of finding a producer to back them, both to realize his dreams on the Great White Way and to reunite his friends.

It’s not a bad premise. It pulls the animating idea from *The Muppet Movie* and the motive that always seems to work for Kermit and friends -- they want to get out there and entertain people. And it reverses the arc of that movie, with Kermit losing his pals early and needing to find a good reason to get them back together rather than gathering them and finding the shared vision to lead them. On paper, this one should be able to boast the quota of heart that *Caper* was missing and the first Muppet film had in spades.

But it’s just not there. Instead we get a tortured mistaken love triangle between Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Jenny, the human co-star who’s so bland and unmemorable that I literally forgot her name despite having finished the movie less than an hour ago. (The actress reads every line like she’s a Scooby Doo character who just unmasked the villain.) Instead we get a raft of unfunny diner humor, as an Eastern Bloc cook gives Kermit and Rizzo jobs and the humor sinks to the bottom of the borscht. Instead we get an extended amnesia subplot for the frog, which ends with the dumbest el kabong resolution this side of a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Whatever promise lay in the premise, it’s squandered in a sea of cheesy gags that aren’t fit for such hallowed felt.

Not for nothing, there’s a bizarre strain of sexist humor that feels patently un-Muppet. Animal chases after a coed yelling “WOMAN! WOMAN!” Construction workers hoot and holler at Miss Piggy. Rizzo sexually harasses his coworker and gets bonked himself for the trouble. Another rat gawks at Brooke Shields and asks if she’s into interspecies relationships. It’s not as though the Muppets have never gone for goofy, over-the-top, romantic affections before, but there’s a strange lecherous tone to all of these “jokes” which make them feel out of place in the irreverent but friendly confines of Muppetdom.

Gone are the fourth wall-breaking comedy bits. Gone is the sincere devotion to random absurdism. Gone is the crackling repartee among the Muppet performers. In their place, we get painfully bad send-ups of the New York entertainment industry and its potentates, an unpleasant series of stalking jokes, and hacky shtick where slavic cooks ramble about nonsensical old country wisdom. Of all the Muppet movies, this is the one that feels the most like it’s been infected by the 1980s instead of maintaining the timeless quality Henson’s creations do at their best, with jokes that have aged like yogurt on a radiator. *The Muppets Take Manhattan* is a mere ninety minutes or so, with humor this stale, it feels much longer.

Adding to the problem, there’s nothing in the third Muppet feature that truly wows you. Whatever the ups and downs of the prior two movies, Henson and company worked together to push the limits of puppets on film. Whether it was freestanding Muppet characters dancing together, or the whole gang going on a bike ride together, or a diving aquatic number, the big set pieces left you admiring the ambition even when things didn’t perfectly click. *The Muppets Take Manhattan* is workmanlike-at-best by comparison, with a few minor tricks -- mainly the (eventually) lucrative Muppet Babies daydream sequence -- in a film that otherwise comes off like Oz and his collaborators are resting on their laurels.

The movie does (mercifully) pick up a little at the very end. The show never really does enough to earn it, but there’s something undeniably warm when the Kermit’s friends rejoin him, even if the reunion mainly coasts on the affection of past outings. The Muppets do still know how to put on a show, and when delving into pure performance over storytelling, the talents under those wiggling dolls still shine through.

Oddly though, the film highlights its own pathology. Throughout the movie, Kermit’s apt to stage his production, but tells all involved that the script is missing something. He ultimately concludes that it’s more: more friends, more bears, more chickens, more whatevers. Taken generously, it’s a “the more, the merrier” moral, in a movie where the Muppets try to go it alone but are only happy when in the company of friends.

But taken less charitably, an exhausted reviewer could read it as, “We don’t have to rediscover that spark, just keep giving the audience more of the same old thing.” Only this Muppet adventure feels hollow. There’s none of the inspirational joy of *The Muppet Movie* and none of the pure comic gold of *The Great Muppet Caper*. There’s just familiar characters, in a familiar guise, missing that something extra that makes the puppet special. The Muppets may have made it everywhere else, but they sure can’t make it here.