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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Monthly Muppets: The Muppets Haunted Mansion (Comissioned by Emma Fici)

Happy Halloween all you happy muppets! Welcome and welcome back to Monthly Muppets, my regular look at all things muppety. Today we have something perfect for the spooky season as we take a look at last year's D+ Halloween Special and at the time of this writing the latest full on muppet project, with Mayhem coming oh so soon, The Muppets Haunted Mansion!

Just to get this out of the way upfront I DID do my due dillgence on the haunted mansion, watching a two part video from offhand disney on it that nicely covered the ride's structure and varoius ghosts so I knew who was who, and I got more info from my good friend Jess, who watched this with me this year and the last. I didn't end up needing most of it, but I felt it was prudent. That said i'm as you can tell not a hardcore fan having not gone on the ride hwen I was in Florida (having been really scared of spooky things at the time and overestimating how terrifying this). At most I suffered through the Eddie Murphy movie when it came out. Will i review that for halloween next year?

i'm not touching it unless someone comissions it. Do plan to review Werewolf By Night, next year though time permitting. So look forward to that.

That said what I have seen of the ride is delightful and i'm bummed I missed out on it: it's creative, wonderful and has evolved considerably. Also gonna look into the vastly diffrent paris version. So while I'm not exactly a haunted mansion superfan I do love and respect the ride and thanks to defunctland disney parks and ride design as a whole. And as far as ride accuracy goes they did a smashing job.

It takes bits from both the florida and calfornia versions, and the results re gret and while a few things are missing, it's likely because this special was cut down rather than a lack of love. It's clear the writers loved this ride and wanted to do it justice and the results made me more curious about the ride after both watches as a result. It's a clearly loving tribute.

As a special itself it's decent and with a simple setup and plot: Gonzo is invited to a mansion to try and last the whole night there and being Gonzo naturally responds to a creepy invite to a mysterious mansion where a famous magician famously vanished in the less fun way with a resounding

While Pepe tags along because Gonzo needs a sidekick and they coudln't get Rizzo apparently. After getting warnings from both Shirley and Harry Frickin Potter, their greeted by the Ghost Host, the usually disembodied voice of the mansion but since a in person celebrity gets residual non muppets fans to watch, we have Bojack Horseman himself to greet our heroes and issue a challenge: survivie the house, exit by sunrise or stay forever. It's a simple spooky premise and allows the rest of the muppets to show up as the various ghoulies and ghosties. Except Alice Cooper. Satan must've had him working overtime.

The simple concept works decently enough , just a simple setup to get two muppets into the mansion so the rest can play the various rolls with Fonzie as the Hatbox Ghost. Which confuses me. Not Fonzie as HBG, he looks really awesome and creepy despite having a very small roll and the HBG has an interesting history having been always intended for the ride but due to faulty animatronics not being used initially and only being reinstated with a new animatronic in 2015. No I wondered what a hat box is.. it's a box for storing and transporting hats.. Why this was ever necessary I don't know.

The muppets for the various Haunted Mansion varatious are incredible. While the Muppet Crew always put great work into temporary models for our classic troupe, they really outdid themselves this time and the results are visually impressive and fun to watch and there are a few good gags here or there. THe limo Drivers snark, two ghosts who accompany the ghost host constanlty getting the cute to go dun dun dun wrong, and of course the ballroom scene having a brief touch of one of my faviorite recurring muppet show bits, at the dance. THe problem is while this isn't a TERRIBLE special it does feel rather.. flat a lot of the time. Part of it is likely the shaved run time but a lot of it feels like they just don't knwo what to do beyond "put x muppet into the roll of x ghost". It works a lot, and it's still visually great but there's not a ton of the heart or madness that makes the muppets the muppets. The heart that is there isn't bad, as Gonzo faces his greatest fear and it genuinely gets horrifying as he rapidly ages him, with Gonzo worrying about being forgotton.. only for Kermit,as naturally bein ga ghostly trap it's showing him the party to rub it in, saying Gonzo dosen't need to be worry about being great. He's great as is. It's genuinely sweet if not set up well enough. Also it has to be said Matt Vogel HAD NOT gotten Kermit down yet. This has been talked about a lot, especailly before WHY Steve Whitmire was let go went public, but I can't really dance around it: Whlie Matt seems to have settled into the roll he clearly wasn't given any traning, Steve's fault, and thus sounds VERY awkward. Like he ALMOST has the voice but just not quite. I really do feel for the guy as he had ot take the roll suddenly, while Steve was trained personally by jim for it and while I don't want disney to corpratize the muppets more than I have, I do hope this conviences them to prepare succesors better much like they have for the various performers for mickey and friends. And tbf on that front Tony Anselmo, THE BEST Donald Duck, took a while to get comfortable too. I have faith matt will.

The problem is it's just a lot of style without subtance. Good production but not a lot of great gags to back it up. NOt terrible.. but nothing really amazing like some of the productions we've covered here. It's not TERRIBLE, but outside of a few shining moments it's not memorable. I forgot a lot of this till the rewatch. It's not BAD nor was it unplesant to watch, but i'll likely forget it again and didn't have a ton to say on the quality: it's .. fine.

The only other major problem with Pepe whose VERY clearly here because no one else would date the walking flag of a black widow tha tis Constance Hatchaway, played incredibly here by Taraj P Henson who luckily is one of those performers game to ham it up and thus fits in fine, and her various husbands trying to warn him, as well as Uncle Deadly just.. resigned to the fact pepe is likely going to die and not carrying as the minister is fucking great and a highlight of the special. I just wish it was rizzo instead of pepe. Nothing against Pepe but he spends most of the specail eithe rignoring red flags or whining that this isn't a celebrity party which gets old fast

Speaking of celebrities we have a lot of cameos to adress: First up is Yvette Nicole Brown whose adorable as the LImo Driver who is positive our heroes won't make it out alive and is plesantly suprised when they do. When then have OG Starkid and music maestro Darren Criss who sings a wonderful song highlighting all the ghosts represnted by the tombstones in the ride queue. While he is a weird choice for the graveyard man as he's you know, not an old man and not dressed in old man makeup or anything, his voice, commitment ot the bit and general charm make up for it. I mean it's Darren Criss. I"m not going to say no to him singing to me in his lovely voice. No one is. He's the man.

The graveyards also where we get most of the celebrity cameos: I genuinely care about most like Danny Trejo (Who apparently is just welded to the muppets and i'm on board with that), the late great Ed Asner, this is us now alumnis Crissy Metz (that show was good cheesy sappy fun) and of course this beautiful son of a bitch

We also have Jeanie Mai. We also have some busts cameo: child actress skye jackson, some guy who hosted the game awards, Justina Machedo from the criminally cancelled one day at a time reboot and the pontaic bandit himself Craig Robinson. Most are just short and there and gone. We also get a quick cameo from

So that's nice. Finally we have Will Arnett as the ghost host. I'm on record being a fan of Wills so it's no suprise I like his performance: he's nicely chilling and while not as hammy as the actual ghost host, does a good job adding spooky atmosphere while also being hilarously deadpan. He's really effective in the part, truly supporting gonzo when he leaves and helping him ocne he's won to save pepe. I don't know WHY he's saving pepe but he is.

So for our final bit it's onto the music:

Starting and ending us off we have a BITCHING cover of Dancin in the Moonlight by electric mayhem that's also in the credits and i'm happy to learn later got released so i'll be listening to that on loop. It's both perfect for the halloween theme and just a great song already that's naturally made better with Dr. Teeth's vocals. Amazing stuff.

Rest in Piece is a lovely cameo filled diddy by Darren. As usual with anything he sings it's great, and the various cameos are really hilarous. It's truly haunting and yet also fun, just like the mansion itself

Life Hereafter is a fun ballroom diddy with all the muppets and one of the highlights of the special, especially since it's that rare opportunity Will Arnett gets to sing. Why Bojack never did a full on musical episode given all it's creative swings for episodes is beyond me.

Finally we have Tie the Knot Tango, Constance and Pepe's duet. It sure did happen

So that's muppets haunted mansion. l'm honestly sad I didn't have more to say: the haunted mansion itself is a deep hole of intresting I hope to dive more into and it had great cameos but ultimately it suffers from the era it came out in: ti's clear that after the commerical failures of Muppets Most Wanted and "The Muppets" tv show, Disney didn't know WHAT to do with it, not having the faith to do anything more with it and thus trying smaller projects to see if those took off. Thankfully they are trying something creative and new iwth the Muppets Mayhem so we'll see how this goes.

As for how this ranks it's pretty easy this go round

MHM goes right next to our last feature, The Muppets Take Manhattan. So not rock bottom but The Muppets Wizard of Oz set a very high bar for the worst on here and it'd take a LOT to be worse than that, just as it will take a lot to beat out david bowie at his david bowiest.

Next time i'm getting to sesame street just in time for thanksgiving with Follow That Bird .Until then thanks for reading, follow for more, reblog this to pass it around and join my patreon to help me keep making these.. and watch out for hitchhiking ghosts.

#the muppets #haunted mansion #will arnett #darren criss #disney +#disney plus #disney #halloween

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