The Muppets return for new escapade

The Muppets return for new escapade

While animated wizardry makes essentially anything doable for filmmakers these days, there's something comforting concerning the Muppets returning in all their floppy, fuzzy puppet-ness.
Kermit, Miss Piggy and the remainder of the gang are back to entertain a brand new generation of fans -- likewise because the older ones -- in "Muppets Most Wanted," released in the United States on Friday.
The new movie comes 3 years after Disney revived the franchise with "The Muppets," that made $158 million and won a best song Oscar for "Man or Muppet."
The 201one film was such successful that Disney, which in 2004 bought the youngsters's TV troupe created by Jim Henson, agreed to create a sequel with the same director, James Bobin.
The Briton and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller could be the same, however a new human solid this time includes British comic Ricky Gervais, and Americans Tina Fey and Ty Burrell.
"Muppets Most Wanted" opens where the last film left off, with Kermit and co flushed from their triumphant come back to showbusiness.
Their hintingly-named manager Dominic Badguy (Gervais) suggests a world tour, an idea seized on by they all -- except Kermit -- very little suspecting that Badguy is truly working with Constantine, an evil Kermit double.
The film remains trustworthy to the Muppet traditions: plenty of fun, tons of musical numbers and featuring celebrity guest stars -- in this case Celine Dion, making her film debut as Miss Piggy's fairy godmother.
- 'English sort of a Frenchman' -
Burrell, star of award-winning TV series "Modern Family," plays Jean-Pierre Napoleon, a heavily-accented French policeman who teams up with Sam the Eagle, patriotic and protecting of the Muppets, to look for Constantine.
To speak English sort of a Frenchman, the actor worked with an accent coach.
"She helped me a lot. She was on set with me for each take. Basically she had a excellent ear," Burrell told AFP.
"I found it terribly difficult for positive," he said, however added: "I very enjoyed it as a result of I do not get to do stuff like that terribly often. I had a blast doing it."
The alternative challenge was working with puppets -- and legendary ones at that.
"It's a very little disconcerting at first to reasonably see behind the curtains thus to talk, then you get used to it very quickly," said Burrell, adding that he was astonished at how the puppeteers work.
"You gain even a lot of admiration for them when working with them. They do primarily seven things for every one factor we do as humans. I watched them with real admiration.
"I completely do consider them as actors... They're doing something that is more difficult than what we have a tendency to're doing I think," he said. "Any puppeteer is extremely expressing himself just like several actor would do."
Burrell joked that he ended up treating the Muppets like real people.
"You do forget that they're Muppets. When the scene gets started, you only start talking to Sam Eagle and I even talked to Sam Eagle in between scenes or in between takes," he said.
Burrell acknowledged that he's a life-long Muppet fan, having watched the first TV "Muppet Show" as a kid.
"I keep in mind really distinctly the gap sequence and sitting with my dad and having (old men puppet characters) Statler and Waldorf build some comments, and my dad simply laughing hysterically," he said.
"Those are the type of memories that continue you. When your dad or somebody you research to finds one thing funny, you really be aware of that, you really concentrate to it.
"I was like, 'Wow, OK, that's what funny is...' In that approach they had a large influence on me."