It's a rare treat when Kermit the Frog personally introduces a world-first clip from his new movie, and an even bigger one when he does it live from New York. When it turns out to be as funny, charming and generally awesome as the ten minutes of **The Muppets **that Big Screen witnessed on Sunday, the superlatives run out. We'd love to be able to post it for you in actual, video form but we'd be clamped in irons, so here's a verbal breakdown as a taster of what to expect.
The clip picked up just after world's-biggest-Muppets-fan Walter and his friends Mary (Amy Adams) and Gary (Jason Segel) have discovered villain Tex Richman’s scheme to destroy the Muppets Theatre. They roll up at Kermit’s mansion to beg for his help only to be confronted by a daunting set of iron gates.
Kermit's clearly not been credit-crunched down over the years: this is a big step up from that swamp residence (imagine the kind of Hollywood mansion that’d made Zombieland’s Bill Murray green with envy, then double it). There's even an electric fence and personalised security gates. And lo! It’s Kermit himself, haloed by an angelic glow; the cue for a sight gag which we won't spoil but that had the audience corpsing.
What else did we learn? That Kermit has a hapless robot servant (seriously, Wall-E he ain’t), TaB cola is still drunk in the Frog household, and Kermit has some serious misgivings about the trio's plan to earn $10m and rescue the theatre. “The only way to raise that kind if money is to put on a show,” he explains forlornly, “and I haven’t seen the old gang for so long. I guess people forgot about us...”
Cue one of those poignant Kermy ditties we love so much. He sings wistfully of his old pals, who are now “only pictures in my head”. And on his wall. “Who’d have thought your smorgasbord would be hard to live without,” he sings, touching a portrait of the Swedish Chef. Suddenly the whole gang are joining in from their portrait perches - a nod to Harry Potter’s ghostly paintings? - with Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem in the lead and Swedish Chef (in subtitles) on backing vocals. Bork!
A despondent Kermit tells Walter that it can’t be done, in one of those genuinely teary moments the Muppets have given us down the years. Walter begs him to change his mind, professing his undying faith in his green hero and flashing his Kermit-faced watch as proof. And before you can say 'rooooaaad trip!', the quest is on.
It's **The Blues Brothers **in felt costumes and it looks all kinds of fabulous. **The Muppets **is out on February 10, 2012.