by canofhumdingers » Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:43 am
I saw it a couple days ago. I enjoyed it, but I agree that it wasn't as good as the first one. The opening sequence was pretty great (the song about the sequel) and the stuff with Ty Burrell and Sam the Eagle was quite funny. But I think the issue, at least for me, was there was too much focus on Constantine at the expense of other (real) muppets. For example, Gonzo felt underutilized and Rowlf was hardly there at all. Tina fey's character was pretty good, but Ricky Gervais was pretty flat. And like someone else mentioned somewhere, a lot of the short cameos felt mishandled.
Also, some of the effects just didn't feel very muppet-ish. In the classic films, part of the enjoyment was seeing how creative they could get with the actual puppets. Stuff like Kermit riding a bicycle or the rats in the kitchen. But here, they just resorted easier ways of doing things like heavy use of computer compositing, and I even think some of it was actually cgi (specifically Constantine attacking people as he breaks out of prison).
Over all I did like it but after sitting on it for a couple of days I definitely think it fell short of what it could have been. It was much more uneven and for every thing that they got right and felt very muppet-y, there was something equally as un-muppet-y just around the corner.
My wife and I did enjoy seeing the stuff filmed at the Tower of London having just been there on vacation a few months ago. It's always fun to see places you've been in person up on the silver screen.