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.
