Wait, Ray Liotta Was In Two MUPPET Movies?!!?

When Ray Liotta passed away last week, tributes poured in largely citing his intense performance as Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster classic GOODFELLAS, and his touching portrayal of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Phil Alden Robinson’s 1989 baseball drama, FIELD OF DREAMS. Liotta’s other notable work in various films and TV series got some print as well, but one vital item got glossed over, and that's the surprising, and very fun fact that the man appeared in two of the Muppet movies.

In Tim Hill’s MUPPETS FROM SPACE (1999), Liotta appears in the third act credited as “Gate Guard,” a typical authority-figure-our-heroes-have-to-get-past part. In order to infiltrate a top secret national security facility called C.O.V.N.E.T., Miss Piggy utilized her Mind Mist spray to manipulate Liotta, basically turning him into an agreeable, smiling idiot. Watch the scene:

15 years later, Liotta’s second cinematic run-in with the Muppets found him on the other side of the law. In James Bobin’s MUPPETS MOST WANTED (2014), Liotta plays a Gulag inmate named “Big Papa,” who mostly lingers in the background like an extra until the Siberian Gulag Revue, the prisoners’ annual talent show. That’s where we hear Big Papa declare “we like Boyz II Men,” and display some rough, but invested harmony singing.

In an interview with We Got This Covered, Liotta explained his involvement: “With the Muppets? We sing and dance. Me and Danny Trejo are in prison, Kermit is there as well as scattered other Muppets. Kermit gets thrown into jail because they think he’s somebody he’s not, and the identical of him, this guy Constantine, is going out and doing bad things. So yeah, we’re just singing and dancing. Tina Fey is the Warden, Ricky Gervais is somebody in it, it was a lot of fun. It’s really funny. It’s all singing and dancing.”

 

Another interview with Liotta, from the set of MUPPETS MOST WANTED with ScreenSlam, also shows us a bit of how much fun he was having on the shoot:

Now these cameos may seem trivial, maybe even the definition of trivial, but it’s significant to me because of Liotta’s tough guy persona, and that over the run of eight Muppet movies, the human guest stars rarely repeat. The only other example I can find is that Elliot Gould put in cameos in THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979), and THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN (1983), but Liotta’s walk-ons were just a little more substantial - one of them even has a name (“Big Papa”) while Gould’s were just “Beauty Contest Compare,” and “Cop at Pete’s” respectively.

 

It must be noted that Zach Galifianakis played the same character, Hobo Joe, in both THE MUPPETS (2011), and MUPPETS MOST WANTED, but the scruffy comic feels like more of a fit in the world of funny felt than Liotta for sure.

 

Liotta was only in a few other films of the family-friendly variety (or maybe only one, the animated Jerry Seinfeld vehicle, BEE MOVIE), which is why having two outings with Kermit the Frog and company stands out in his distinguished, and fairly dark filmography. It also seems like a necessary side-line since when looking over Liotta’s career, which spanned over four decades, and contained over 70 movies, I’m not seeing anywhere else where he could really get in some singing and dancing.  

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The MUPPETS Follow-up: Funny But Felt Too Long

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

MUPPETS MOST WANTED
(Dir. James Bobin, 2014)

The Muppets are back in “the seventh sequel since their original motion picture,” as Dr. Bunsen Honeydew informs us in the opening song and dance number (“We’re Doing a Sequel”), to prove that they don’t need Jason Segel’s help anymore to forge the franchise ahead. 

Since the first sequel to 1979’s THE MUPPET MOVIE, was a jewel heist scenario set overseas (1981’s THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER), returning director Bobin, co-writing with Nicholas Stoller have apparently decided that the new follow-up to the 2011 franchise reboot, THE MUPPETS, should go the same route.

That's fine by me because, unlike, say, J.J. Abram's STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, the movie doesn't retread the same ground blindly. It uses its premise for a springboard for a bunch of new inspired nonsense; it doesn't repeat as much as a single joke from before.

As one of human guest star leads, Ricky Gervais pops up as a slick promoter to suggest to Kermit the Frog: “How about the Muppets go on a world tour?” and we're off. Ignoring the red flag that Gervais' name is Dominic Badguy (“pronounced bædgee, it's French.”), The Muppets put on a series of shows on a tour that includes stops in Berlin, Madrid and London.

We learn in Plotpointburg (yep) that Gervais is Number Two to the world’s Number One criminal, Constantine, who happens to be Kermit's exact double, well, except for a distinctive mole. Constantine (voiced with a heavy Russian accent by Matt Fogel) frames Kermit by planting a fake mole on him, which gets him captured and placed in prison, a Siberian Gulag run by Tina Fey, also laying the Russian accent on thick.

Constantine takes Kermit’s place - despite his accent and demeanor none of the other Muppets notice (well, Animal does but nobody pays attention) – so that he and Gervais can pull off museum and bank robberies while the others put on their noisy shows in the neighboring venues.

Another of the highlighted humans, Modern Family’s Ty Burrell is on board as an Inspector Clouseau-ish Interpol agent who works with Sam the Eagle to track down the thieves, and somehow they are able to fit in cameos by such celebrities as Lady Gaga, Christoph Waltz (dancing a waltz, of course), Frank Langella, Céline Dion, and Ray Liotta (who was also in MUPPETS IN SPACE incidentally).

This is all funny stuff, and Brett McKenzie’s incredibly catchy witty songs are all just as strong as his Oscar winning “Man or Muppet” from THE MUPPETS - especially Constantine’s soul ballad sung to Miss Piggy: “I'll Get You What You Want (Cockatoo in Malibu)” – but at an hour and 53 minutes, the movie is way too long.

Even with every scene having at least one big legitimate laugh, a bunch of bits should’ve been shaved off to make this a tight 90 minutes or so. 

A scene in which we learn that Fey is a closet Kermit fan is cute but would’ve been better as a deleted scene on the later Blu ray/DVD release. Likewise some of the storyline involving Fey’s staging a production in prison with Kermit and his Gulag inmates (including McKenzie’s former Flight of the Conchords partner Jermaine Clement) could’ve been edited down a bit, as funny as it is to see Danny Trejo singing a verse of “The Casa Grande.”

Overall, I enjoyed MUPPETS MOST WANTED quite a bit, but just wanted it to end earlier. Bobin, Stoller, McKenzie, and all the Muppeteers (shout out to Dave Goelz, the only original member of the original Muppet team here) are doing a good job keeping the spirit of Henson’s warm and fuzzy vision alive, they just need to reign it in.

So here’s hoping that the Muppets next sequel, in which they’ll probably be Broadway bound, will find them putting on a tighter show with a much more reasonable running time.

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