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Statler And Waldorf From the Balcony

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the muppets-with-attitude dept.

An Anonymous Reader wrote in to mention Statler and Waldorf From the Balcony, a short feature on movies.com where the surly Muppets review current films. From the site: "This Week's Episode - Will War of the Worlds' aliens scare off our cranky coots? Will Bewitched be the end of Will? Plus, Pepe the Prawn begs Miss Congeniality to cuff him."

7 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. It's not very good... by Nimrangul · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The voices are poor imitations of their originals.

    The writing is pretty bad, nothing witty or zinging about it.

    They don't bad mouth it properly, even when an act was amazing on the Muppet Show they'd hate it. With this they're playing it too soft.

    I think it would be hard for them to have come up with a worse idea, except maybe if it were to get into extremely bad racist jokes, violence and sexual content. That's about the only thing they could have done to make this a worse desecration of my childhood.

    --
    I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
    1. Re:It's not very good... by SilentChris · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You mean the Muppets are different because the writers, puppetteers, etc. are different than they were over 20 years ago? Gasp!

      Newsflash: your childhood was not all it's cracked up to be. Atari wasn't that good, the B-52s were NEVER cool, some of the writing on the Muppet Show downright stunk. Funny? Nearly always. But rarely "witty or zinging".

      I laughed. That's all that really matters. If you don't like it *gasp again!*, click your close button.

    2. Re:It's not very good... by SuperBanana · · Score: 2, Interesting
      They don't bad mouth it properly, even when an act was amazing on the Muppet Show they'd hate it.

      And they'd make some pretty clever jabs, too- like the time when their "opinion" of the show dropped through the floor over the course of about 5 seconds.

      S:"You know that wasn't half bad."
      W:"It was okay."
      S:"I've seen better."
      W:"It was pretty bad!"
      S:"It was horrible!"
      W:"Booo!"
      S:"Booo!"

      Much of the beauty of S&W was that you ONLY saw them doing their brief little bit, and that little bit was pure 100% comedy. Plenty of muppet characters were grumpy (Miss Piggy comes to mind), but with S&W, they were like an espresso shot of comedy. Everyone could also identify with the stereotypical cranky old guy who pipes up out the middle of nowhere and just says something completely off the wall or obnoxious.

      Whoever did this obviously has no appreciation for why Statler and Waldorf worked.

      I think it would be hard for them to have come up with a worse idea, except maybe if it were to get into extremely bad racist jokes, violence and sexual content.

      Apparenly you didn't stick around long enough for Pepe's review of "Miss Con'gentialia', about a HOT FBI agent, she can (something something- sorry, supressed the memory already) me anytime" etc etc. Jim Henson just flew clear out of his grave and did a back-flip somersault.

      PS:If anyone can find online the letter Jim Henson wrote to be read at his memorial service, they'll have my eternal gratitude. I've never found it, and it was terrific (I'll never forget his sister reading it, and the audience laughing at "and that's final, because I'm DEAD and you can't argue with me about it").

      --
      Please help metamoderate.
  2. sorry disney... by TheHawke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But the original hecklers on the muppet show had more venom than what these jokers had to show..
    Better scripting fellas!

    --
    First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
  3. Re:Not even close... by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > Miss piggie and kermit are selling pizza, ugg...

    Worse than that, remember the ads for Denny's?

    With Miss Piggy ordering several large breakfasts?

    Immediately followed by a shot of said breakfasts, which included bacon?

    My inner child died the day I saw Miss Piggy advocating cannibalism.

  4. I guess I'm the only one who liked it. by interstellar_donkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Weird.

    People have been accusing me of being out of touch with the rest of the world. I guess this cements it.

    I thought it was funny, and the kind of thing I'd watch every week. Not super funny, mind you, but good enough to see again.

    --
    The Internet is generally stupid
  5. Not as bad as suggested. by fussili · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's a lot of negativity about it but it's not that bad. I'll admit the voice of Statler is FAR off and seems strained but Waldorf isn't that bad. If they had better voicing for Statler and were more acerbic then it'd be excellent, as it is it's still entertaining. I get the feeling most of the ./ers just tuned out after the WotW preview but if you watched it all the way they lay into Will Farrell and the Bewitched film pretty heavily :) In true keeping with their character. Tighten up the writing, replace Statler's voice and this is a hit.