|
|
| Monday, February 11, 2008 12:59 PM |
| On the Viewer - Meet the Feebles |
 by Fëanor |
Before Peter Jackson became the critically acclaimed director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he made a very different kind of trilogy in his native New Zealand: a trio of comedy/fantasy/horror films which, although otherwise unconnected, are all equally gory, disgusting, disturbing, and tasteless. They include the aptly named Bad Taste, Braindead (or Dead Alive), and this film, Meet the Feebles. And now that I've finished watching the latter, I can truthfully say that I've seen them all.
The easiest way to describe Meet the Feebles is to say that it's a seriously twisted version of The Muppet Show. But that doesn't even come close to describing how incredibly messed up this movie is. In the course of rehearsing and performing a live musical variety show, the animal puppets who populate this film manage to take part in every pathetic, sick, shameful, illegal, disgusting, immoral, degrading act you can imagine, including, but not limited to, vomiting, drug abuse, kinky sex, 'Nam flashbacks, porn, attempted rape, attempted suicide, a drug deal gone awry, shit-eating, mass murder, and, worst of all, tabloid journalism (zing!). In fact, the film is so filthy and hideous, and so devoid of any likable characters (even the young, pure, new recruit - a hedgehog named Robert - is so naive and shy that he's annoying), that I often had to turn it off and watch something else for a while. Each time I did this, I seriously considered never turning it back on again. But eventually I did make my way through the entire thing, and by the end I'll admit I had begun to enjoy it to a certain extent. Still, I never found the "comedy" in the film to be particularly funny, and the ending I enjoyed mostly because (spoiler alert) it involves most of the disgusting cast of characters being horribly killed, which was perversely entertaining.
Maybe part of the reason the movie mostly didn't work for me is that as a child I genuinely loved - and, let's be honest, as an adult, still love - The Muppet Show. Although none of the characters in Meet the Feebles are direct analogs of any of the characters in The Muppet Show (at least, not as far as I can tell), the general similarities are many and clear, and it's kind of tough to see something that you loved with such a pure and child-like love brought down so low, and transformed into something so intensely impure and adult. (Although, actually, "juvenile" seems a more appropriate term to use than "adult" when describing Meet the Feebles.)
Still, the concept of Meet the Feebles is rather clever and funny in and of itself, and the filmmakers take that concept just about as far as it can be taken; this is the definitive nasty muppet movie. Also, the design and execution of the muppets is pretty impressive. And the songs are actually pretty catchy, although thankfully I haven't found myself singing the one about sodomy aloud in mixed company.
I would say that seen in the right frame of mind and with the right group of people, Meet the Feebles could be an entertaining film. I'm therefore rather sad that I missed seeing it when it was screened at the now defunct weekly movie night that I used to attend, as I think I might have enjoyed watching the movie that way much more than I did watching it over a long period of time on my iPod while exercising. Still, all in all, I'm not sad I saw Meet the Feebles. Besides a few short films, it was the last movie by Peter Jackson I hadn't seen yet. And it's an experience I can now say I've had. Yes, I've seen that nasty muppet movie. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
