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.

Not that great. Perhaps very young children might enjoy this. I would be surprised if many folks over 9 or 10 find Kermit's Swamp Year's entertaining. It's lacking in charm, wit and humor. The best part of the DVD is the Behind-the-scenes featurette with the armadillo and the on the set interview with Kermit. If the movie were as funny as the special features, it would be worth having.

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.

This recent Muppet film has been greeted with accusations of cynical "cashing-in" on the part of the producers. These can be easily batted away, however, when one comes to personally experience this re-imagining of Kermit's origins.

With a batch of new, but undeniably 'muppet' friends, Kermit begins life as just another ordinary frog - but it is the fact that he could love and can dream that sets him apart and on the road to fame.

I was reminded of the opening scenes of 'The Muppet Movie', when 'Rainbow Connection', and the spindly-legged creature singing it, stole my infant heart and replaced it with a font of dreams and wandering imagination. At that age I wondered what Kermit was doing on the swamp planet of Dagobah,not recognising the Florida everglades. In a way, I feel that this was a correct, spiritual link to make - between Henson's musical amphibian and Oz's diminutive sage the common truth that it is "not easy being green" is shared.

With Kermit's name in the title, the film is a must for fans, or rather, kin of the muppets. The 'Disney's franchise' years are behind it, unsavoury memories of the corporate-flavoured 'Muppets in Disneyworld' TV special are expunged from the memory and the renaissance engendered by 'Muppets in Space' continues apace.

The original muppet-makers' hands are less in evidence on this film, but don't let that turn you away. In many ways this is the spiritual cousin, and, oddly, natural accompaniment to the Star Wars prequels.

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