"Don't you remember? We built this city. We built this city on rock and roll!"
I'm probably the last person you'd have predicted a response such as this from, especially given my track record over the past year. With "X-Men: First Class", "Super 8", and "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" coming and going with only gaining dissatisfaction in return, it's definitely been a cynical year for cinema, at least from where I'm sitting. There's the inappropriate expectation that what the audience wants is simple spectacle, rather than excitement. It's hard to remember the last time a mainstream feat managed to raise the hairs on my spine with general thrills, and that absence has not escaped me. It would take a great deal of digging to hit the oil that the Muppets are digging for, to use a hint of intended irony.
The first moments of the film don't really get off to a brilliant start, and it really put me back in the mood I've been in for the past several months. The old-style home video reels phasing into the present day was an early sign that this wasn't gonna be the reunion I wanted, and in a few ways it wasn't. What I wanted was a fantasy, and the further the film progressed, the more those old, authentic Muppet memories came back. The opening was just a rough settling back into this world, and though it's not a sign of the joy and wound you'd feel after the film's first act, we almost needed our hopes to be let down before they could be built back up again, brick by brick.
