Muppets Haunted Mansion Is a Perfect Puppet Balancing Act

Today, The Muppets Haunted Mansion hits Disney+, and whereas not precisely as frightful for us as it’s for Pepe and Gonzo, it definitely is pleasant. For the primary time shortly, it feels just like the form of collaboration Disney and the Henson Company have been on the lookout for to make the Muppets actually really feel at house on the home of mouse.

Haunted Mansion—ostensibly a collaboration that sees Gonzo and Pepe ditch Kermit’s annual Halloween occasion to as a substitute spend an evening in the Haunted Mansion of Disney Park fame—is the most recent in a protracted line of Disney’s more moderen makes an attempt to deliver the Muppets in keeping with its personal TV plans. The hit-and-miss revival at ABC tried to cram a Muppets Show vibe into a up to date comedy present setting, and whereas components of its daring experiment to dive into the messy lives of the Muppets past their present have been intriguing, it finally didn’t join. The first Muppets mission for Disney+ in the meantime, Muppets Now, traded the character drama the earlier revival had for skits and movie star cameos, and whereas nonetheless notably higher obtained, additionally lacked that particular one thing if solely as a result of its bite-sized anthology format didn’t actually permit for it.

To be truthful, it’s laborious to compete with the Muppets’ lengthy TV historical past—The Muppet Show specifically—which is such a particular, storied factor within the first place. The Muppets’ explicit mix of antics, earnest character work, and movie star metatext works greatest when every of these parts is given the time to breathe and intermingle. Yes, them goofing round is nice, however The Muppets Show was extra than simply gags, it was in regards to the interaction between the Muppets as characters that we noticed develop as folks working on a present, but additionally because the personalities that exist to face alongside their movie star friends as, properly, The Muppets.

Muppets Haunted Mansion then, in the end it appears, actually will get this. Primarily narrative-driven, even with its bonanza forged of movie star appearances, walks a wickedly humorous tightrope. Will Arnett, Taraji P. Henson, Darren Criss, and Yvette Nicole Brown get the meatiest roles, however crucially they’re there as characters reasonably than themselves, alongside a really daunting record of movie star cameos as well. The particular is sensible sufficient to not make the metatext of the basic theme park journey its focus—for followers, it’s bursting with sight gags, in-jokes, and Easter Eggs—and by no means forgets that past the Muppets’ joyful sense of feel-good humor there’s a ton of coronary heart.

Muppets Haunted Mansion does this by largely paring down the quantity of Muppets it must concentrate on. Pepe is essentially left to wander in regards to the mansion in the hunt for celebrities and a love life, enjoying proper into the spectral, bloodied arms of one of many journey’s well-known characters, Constance Hatchaway. So actually, the highlight is on Gonzo, who has eschewed attending Kermit’s conventional Halloween bash to attempt to survive for one night time within the Haunted Mansion, the subsequent huge stunt for the thrillseeking Gonzo the Great who claims to don’t have any fears. Nothing within the Mansion actually bothers him, principally as a result of it’s numerous singing ghosts and the occasional floating candlestick, as Arnett’s Ghost Host guides him by its halls. But when he comes throughout the dreaded room 999 (which, in fact, inverts its signal the minute he closes its door behind him), Gonzo is confronted with no ghosts or ghouls, no huge horrors, not even an ax-murderer attempting to marry him: however a mirror.

The mirror—and an historic, decrepit model of Gonzo mirrored again at him—reveals him a glimpse at Kermit’s occasion, the place all his pals are having a great time whereas he’s trapped silently on the opposite aspect. Gonzo’s quest to always show himself to be Gonzo the Great has pushed him away from his pals, whilst Kermit tells him (and reminds Scooter simply in time for mirror-Gonzo to overhear) that he doesn’t have to be “Gonzo the Great” to be nice within the eyes of the individuals who care about him probably the most. The plight of Haunted Mansion is not that Gonzo and Pepe should survive the night time and make it out earlier than daybreak, however that Gonzo simply has to be taught that his pals care about him? That proper there may be some Muppet Show spirit, alive and properly, irrespective of what number of movie star ghosts Gonzo and Pepe should run by to be taught it.

It’s what makes Haunted Mansion actually sing, alongside the same old gags and, because of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, one pretty killer cover of Dancing within the Moonlight. It looks like Disney letting the Henson Company do what it does greatest with the Muppets—bringing the guts alongside the fourth-wall, celeb-jokes, and letting them play on the planet of Disney, reasonably than the opposite means round. It won’t be the spookiest particular of the season, but it surely’s most likely going to be one among its greatest.

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