Hi, this is Dana Stephen Slate's movie critic here with a Slate spoiler special podcast on The Muppets,

the new Muppets. It is called The Muppets, not The Muppet movie or anything like that, right?

That's a great question. Yeah, I think so, as opposed to the Muppet movie, the very first.

Back from 79 or something like that. So here with me in the studio, as you hear, is John Swansberg. Hey, John. Hey, Dana. You are Slate's Culture Editor. I am. And you also

just rolled out of this movie. We got to do a same-day spoiler, which I love to do when you have a

little bit of the energy of the movie still in your head. And some of the songs still in my head.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely have that opening and I feel like Jason Siegel is clearly a huge fan

of the Muppets. We learned this, or I learned this for the first time, and forgetting Sarah

Marshall where he staged that wonderful kind of puppet opera at the end of the movie. The vampire puppet

opera. And I thought his enthusiasm and admiration for puppetry and affection clearly for

specifically the old Muppets TV show really kind of shines through in this movie. And as such,

it was a pleasure. Yeah, we walked in both fearing that it might desecrate the Muppets. And that

it definitely doesn't do it. No, it's very much a movie that's paying homage, I think,

to the Muppets. I think arguably maybe that it's times too much so and that takes away some of its energy.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And I would also say, I mean, I guess just as an overall reaction, I don't know that this is a new classic for the ages.

I don't think it's like one of the Pixar movies that kids will be watching in 25 years necessarily? No, in fact, the movie opens with one of those great Pixar shorts.

A Toy Story short, right?

Yeah, it's a Toy Story short that kind of picks up where the final Toy Story movie left off,

or at least it has the young girl from the last...

Bonnie, right, the girl who inherits the toys.

Exactly.

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