It's Time to be Happy

Hello everyone! I was going to post some incredibly thoughtful and earth-shaking ideas about the male gaze and feminism, but it's the start of Dead Week, I just got back from visiting home for Thanksgiving, and it just feels like a bit much.

So instead, I'm going to talk about The Muppet Movie.

I went to go see it yesterday with Jack and my mom and her...man-friend. Anyway, it was awesome. Jason Segel? You have my heart. He wrote and starred in it, and along with his role in How I Met Your Mother, I'm just about willing to say I'd have his wide-shouldered babies.

I spent the whole time smiling. It was a happy movie. It's a Muppet movie. It's supposed to be happy. And I realized as I was watching it that I hadn't been happy in a movie for a long time. They just don't make purely happy movies anymore. Not that I want all movies to be artificially sweet and give an unrealistic representation of life or anything, but Up made me sob, and I feel like there is a place (or should be a place) for optimism in film. Sometimes I just want to see a happy movie with some morals and some puppets and a hell of a lot of singing and dancing, and that is what the Muppet Movie gave me.

This was my childhood. Look at how dour Sam the Eagle is. Isn't it just wonderful?

It was incredibly self-referential, pointed out how freaking terrible Kermit has always been at being a boyfriend for Miss Piggy, and had a big epic song about being yourself. They sang "The Rainbow Connection," had a remake of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as a barbershop quartet, and chickens danced to Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You." There was a montage, a "where are they now?" sequence, and doppelgangers. It gave me every trope and plot line I wanted and more.

It made me happy. And dammit, being happy is awesome.

-- Jazz