The Muppets redux, with Charlotte

They're back! The new Muppet Movie, co-written by and starring Jason  Segel,
shown above with Amy Adams and the gang.

The holidays have always gone hand in hand with the movies in my family.

Not so much in my family of origin: my mother never goes to the movies, yet watches the Academy Awards every year and complains that she didn't see any of these films, so why is she watching this dumb show? My dad used to go to the movies as an outing.

My dad would say: "Do you want to go to the movies?" My mom would ask what was playing. He'd say, "Who cares; do you want to go to the movies or not?" The last film I saw with my dad was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I thought he'd like to see how far special effects have come. It turns out you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to hate Episode I. Who knew?

But in the family I raised, we went to the movies as often as we could afford it, as soon as the kids were old enough. Man, I saw a lot of crap with them. Some craptastic standouts were Mousehunt, about a rodent outsmarting Nathan Lane; Airborne, about a California teenage surfer forced to live with relatives in Cincinnati (in winter!), starring Seth Green; and Center Stage, about young, good-looking hopefuls trying to get into the American Ballet Academy in New York.

It seemed that we ended up at the movies every Thanksgiving and Christmas day, usually after we'd taken relatives' checks to the ATM so we could afford it. It was our family's time together after dealing with our extended family, which was sometimes contentious and stressful.

Charlotte with her kid's pack of movie treats
and a Mickey Mouse lollipop she came in with.
Megan Hernandez photo

I know lots of other people go to the movies on holiday weekends, so I was apprehensive about getting a seat for The Muppet Movie on Saturday, our first theater visit with Charlotte. I made my husband leave the house about 40 minutes early, only to encounter a nearly empty parking lot. I felt a little foolish.

We were the first people in the theater, but eventually enough people showed up to make it a communal experience.

Charlotte has been to the "moobies" before, to see Tangled, Winnie the Pooh and Puss in Boots, but we had never been with her. My daughter posted on Facebook that she had Christmas shopped for Charlotte in the Disney Store right under her nose because the two-year-old was entranced with the huge screen, and we saw a little of that in action.

It's like she is in a spell with a screen in front of her. They arrived after we had sat down, and the whole time my daughter is taking off Charlotte's coat and putting her in the booster seat, the tot never took her eyes off the screen playing commercials. It's rather disturbing.

I knew that my daughters were going to be big movie fans early on. When I put on a VHS of Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks one day, my older daughter saw Robert Stevenson's name on the credits, and said, "Oh, he directed Mary Poppins." She was about 7. We watched a lot of Turner Classic Movies in our house, but when colorized ones came on, we adjusted the set to watch them in black and white.

My son-in-law is a video editor, with a degree in film from San Francisco State; I guess it was kismet that he and my daughter would find each other. He has his heart set on Charlotte going to USC, so maybe it will be USC Film School. Chris is the big Muppet fan in the family, by the way. He owns complete seasons of the Muppet television show on DVD.

If you ask Charlotte what her daddy does, from the time she could talk she would say, "Daddy go work; press buttons." When he has to work on weekends, sometimes he'll take his little family with him, and let Charlotte sit on his lap and press buttons. That might be why she has no problem working anything mechanical at my house.

Jason Segel, the Muppet fan who helped bring the new
Muppet Movie to life, with Kermit and Miss Piggy. The fans
 are saying that the film was made by "the right people,"
who love the original and wanted to see it done right.

The film is adorable, heartfelt,  and laugh-out-loud funny. The Muppets' biggest fan Walter (who apparently hasn't looked in the mirror and discovered that he is a Muppet), overhears a evil oil baron saying he is going to tear down the Muppets' old studio to drill for oil.

That's not an inconceivable notion, there's a oil rig in the middle of Beverly Hill High School.

So, the gang has to get together and put on a telethon to raise 10 million dollars in three days to keep the property. Walter and his human friends Jason Segel and Amy Adams seek out Kermit, and the four of them hunt down the rest of the gang.

Every show biz cliche is here, and played for huge laughs. Fozzie Bear is found playing Reno with a backing band made up of what looks like escaped convicts, including a very hairy boar in drag standing in for Miss Piggy. Meanwhile, Miss Piggy is channeling Anna Wintour as the head of Paris Vogue, and is so successful, she is reluctant to return to her former life.

Some of it is so amazingly clever, I'm still laughing, like the chickens clucking a version of Cee Lo Green's hit single "Forget You," which started out as a song with lyrics so objectionable it had to be rewritten to be played on the radio.

The film was wonderful, full of song and dance numbers, written by one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords (the other one directed the movie). They shut down Hollywood Boulevard for two days filming in front of the El Capitan for the finale, which had me in tears.

Charlotte loved it, but I did get on her People-I'm-Not-Talking-To list because I shushed her once. She says very funny things, but sometimes forgets to whisper. She was very good, although she ended up spilling lemonade all over her shirt, unlike the baby crying intermittenly through the whole film. Just when I would get fed up enough to get an usher, the thing quit screaming.

I can't wait for something else to come out so I can go with Charlotte again. She doesn't know it yet, but she's getting a kid's camera for Christmas that also takes video, so soon she may be making her own films. I'm betting they'll be about bunnies.