Muppets Haunted Mansion

Muppets Haunted Mansion isn't a perfect Halloween special but you have to admit it resolves a lot of problems from Muppets Now. The jokes are better, the characters aren't off, the celebrities aren't a waste of time and actually have decent acting, the sets looked neat, and it even references the original Muppet Show. If there is one thing I don't like about this special it's obviously Matt Vogel doing Kermit the Frog's voice but Kermit doesn't have a main role here so it's not very distracting. This special mostly did a solid job. It may not be the Kermit we wanted or the quality of a Muppet movie from the Jim Henson era, but it atleast solves a lot of the problems that Muppets Now had. So I'm fine with it.

Matt Vogel might actually be the worst thing to happen to Kermit the Frog. Jacksfilms on Youtube does a better Kermit voice and he did it as a parody 🙄, Disney really isn't listening and neither is Jim Henson's son who clearly has have no respect for Henson's legacy.

Muppets Haunted Mansion: my wife's favorite IP and Disneyland ride blended together; she was happy as a clam throughout. And to an extent, I enjoyed this vicariously through her. I liked it; it's a decent holiday special, good message, it's got plenty of feels.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that this is all that Disney plans to do with the Muppets: advertise other Disney stuff. That vertical integration has already leeched onto The Simpsons (cross-breeding it with Star Wars and Marvel) and that's toxic for these characters.

It's not lost on me that I should be happy we're getting new Muppet content at all, but at what cost? There's a GEICO commercial that features Animal, and it's not bad; and this property absolutely needs more pop culture visibility. But it feels dirty if they're just pimping the Mouse's wares.

I hope I'm wrong.

I was disappointed when I learned they were not going to capitalise on the fact that the parks were closed due to Covid, which would have been the perfect opportunity to film inside of the actual mansion at Disneyland. I was hoping for more of a backstage feel of the actual attraction featuring the muppets.

Overall this was cute and entertaining. The songs were good and the puppetry was alright. Unfortunately these later Muppet outings will never live up to what the original artists could deliver. Doubt that? Go and watch the original The Muppet Show, or The Muppet Movie. In this case, Kermit was all wrong. His voice was so far off as to be almost unrecognizable. Bring back Steve Whitmire! At least his Kermit voice was close to Jim Hensons. Miss Piggy was also off, not just the voicing, her character was missing all of its nuance. At least we had Dave Goelz there for Gonzo.