Os Melhores Anos de Caco

although I couldn't put my finger on why. I could have picked it up at Wal-Mart for five bucks, and yet I didn't. There was something about the packaging and the ads I'd seen that made me think "This isn't a Muppet film. This is a kids' movie by people who think they know what kids like" and I didn't know what made me think that way.

Until a few minutes ago, when the answer struck me like a lead brick: Color.

In most, if not all, Muppet productions to date, it has been much easier to ignore the fact that the characters are fairly brightly colored, felt objects, because of the surrounding color. The Muppet Show took place in a dimly lit theater, with dark burgundy curtains serving as Kermit's introductory backdrop. Sesame Street is, for the most part, dark grey. Fairly subdued, real-type places. The Muppet Movie ranges the gamut, but it always takes place in real locations, with no bright colors added for the sake of bright colors. And that's what was missing from (at least the promotional portions of) this movie. It seemed like they were aiming for kids because nothing seemed real. Including the grass. Including the swamp. None of it seemed like it was even *attempting* to be real, and so it was difficult for me to take it seriously enough to even desire to watch it.

It might be a good movie. I don't know. Maybe I'll learn different sometime.

But for this Muppet fan, it was just asking for one unbelief-suspension too many.

stars: Steve Whittemire as Kermit and other. Bill Barretta as Croaker and D'fly. John Kennedy as Arnie the alligator and others. Dave Goelz as Waldorf. Jerry Nelson as Statler.

Interesting little movie about Kermit when he was little. The good things about it were the great look the movie had due to the cameras they used to film it. It had funny references to the Muppets as they are today, including Kermit mentioning that he doesn't like pigs, an appearance by young men Statler and Waldorf and Arnie the alligator which was a character that appeared on the show and was in the Muppet Movie. The plot was that Kermit and Croaker the frogs are going to be dissected for a school project, but escape. Meant for little kids, but adults will enjoy it too.

My rating: B minus. 81 mins.

It has been many years since Kermit has been home so he gets on his scooter and heads back to the swamp. Driving down the road to the swamp Kermit reminisces about the first time he saw that road. He was only a small frog when he and his friends ventured out onto it for the first time – only for two of them to get picked up by a driver in a red truck. Kermit and his other friend were forced to set out after the truck to try and rescue their friends from the terrors of the outside world.

Using the hook of the famous Muppet character in his early years, this film delivers a version of Toy Story where Kermit is forced out into the unfamiliar world to rescue his friends (although where this leaves Muppet Babies in the Muppet universe is beyond me). The plot is basic though and lacks any real emotion or intelligence in the way that Toy Story was and the total film is pretty basic. It has a few laughs along the way for adults but mainly this will appeal to younger children who will be amused by the puppets and engaged by the bad guy of Dr Krassman. I doubt very much though that such basic antics will appeal to older viewers – certainly not to adult viewers who have fond memories of the wit and energy of the Muppet Show.

The voice work is all fine, with Whitmire doing a good job as Kermit, while Barretta, Goelz, Mazzarino and others all fill in well enough. The human cast are so-so; Haggard's not great and try as he might, Hostetter isn't that great a bad guy and can't pull of genuine menace and comedy – so he ends up doing neither particularly well. The tone of the film is overly comic and it does prevent it do anything of significance. Overall a so-so film that will please young children but doesn't do anything else well enough to be of greater value.

Just for the record, I am a big fan of the Muppets, The Muppet Show and Muppet Babies were part of my childhoods, and I love all their specials and movies, excepting Letters to Santa, Muppet Wizard of Oz and this. Kermit's Swamp Years is not terrible, it's just that I had a very lukewarm reception towards it. The costume and set design are splendid, the voice work is great especially from Steve Whitmire and Dave Goelz and there are some cute moments such as the outtakes. However, the songs are mediocre, especially the uninspired lyrics, the script and jokes fall flat due to a lack of comic timing with the human cast with little of the material coming across as memorable or quotable, the story is dull and very basic with too much emphasis on the comic elements consequently the wit and heart is gone and the human cast range from so-so(Drew Haggard) to quite bad(John Hostetter). All in all, didn't do much for me, as much as I do love the Muppets. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Kermit's Swamp Years will likely be a delight for little kids - very little ones - preferably those who have not been acquainted with the Muppets. I employ this statement with emphasis because I feel that anyone who has had any kind of relationship with the Muppet characters we've come to know and love will find this film dreadfully childish and a few steps away from being an insult to the iconic characters' respective legacies.

I can't say they'd be incorrect; this is a pretty immature affair, combining an annoying amount of bathroom humor with a subpar, obligatory fish-out-of-water story that results in tedium and boredom with only a seventy-five minute runtime. It concerns Kermit (voiced by Steve Whitmire, who, I'll say, does a pretty damn good job) who is returning back to his homeland, the swamps, after an extended absence. While cruising down the road on his scooter, he recaps a keen adventure he had with his pals Croaker the Frog and Goggles the Toad, as they naively ventured outside the boundaries of the swamp into, gasp, the land inhabited by shiny creatures (automobiles) and humans.

This lands them in a direct battle with a high school biology teacher (John Hostetter) who wants to collect amphibians for his class's forthcoming dissection. When they team up with a dog named Pilgrim (Cree Summer, who has voice credits on Clifford The Big Red Dog, Drawn Together, and Rugrats), they try and find a way to survive out in the newland and return to their homeland.

For a film titled "Kermit's Swamp Years," very little of the film actually takes place in the swampland. We open with widescale shots, mostly aerial ones, of the swampland and its inhabitants. The scenes provide one with almost a travelogue-esque image of the swamp and warm our hearts with the beauty and the incomprehensible majestic qualities below. Then a fly swoops into the picture, makes some horribly childish jokes, and then we see Kermit on his scooter and the plot begins. We're in the swamp maybe fifteen minutes before we're taken to the archetypal territory of the mainlands, which are no fun in comparison.

In addition, I can't help but feel that Kermit's Swamp Years, in itself, is disrespectful to the proud, invaluable legacy Jim Henson left behind. His Muppet characters had heart and wit, and would never stoop down to the level of inane bathroom-talk as a means of humor and cheap laughs. The relationships with each other - man or Muppet - felt genuine and real; the characters' names you knew for a reason. Watching several Muppet shows when I was a child, I never wanted to get up and leave the couch or have the show end. It was a magical, priceless world I was inhabiting, and I had no intention of leaving it; the real world seemed monotonous and drearily perfunctory. I almost couldn't wait to be done with Kermit's Swamp Years for the exact opposite reason.

I return full-circle to the point I began this review with; this film will be enjoyed by little, little kids. Seven and up may want to move on to old-school Nickelodeon.

Starring: John Hostetter. Voiced by: Steven Whitmire and Cree Summer. Directed by: David Grumpel.