MEET THE FEEBLES (1989) They're like Muppets with way more serious problems I asked for it, literally. Farscape suggested to me that maybe an all-puppet movie wouldn't be too bad of an idea, but Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal left me kinda cold. So, this was suggested to me. This is definitely not like Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal. Oh, no. Peter Jackson's bizarro filmmaking past must be considered, in some circles, akin to that of no one else alive. Nobody else I can think of has become so "respectable" from such, uh, "unrespectable" roots. This, is his roots, a misshapen little brother to Dead Alive. This is, indeed, all puppets - well, puppets and a few men in suits with animatronics maybe a little more upscale than a member of GWAR. Unlike the other puppet movies, though, the puppets here are pretty much at a Muppet level in quality. Not realistic at all, but serviceable. All these puppets represent animals, all performing on a Muppet Show-like variety show. I wondered at first if they were supposed to be puppets, made of puppet materials, but they go splat when they're killed, so they're meant to be the real deal. That's warthog biker is really a warthog; that guru dude who gets his head stuck up his own butt is...I don't really know what he was. I think he was human. There isn't too much plot to speak of, just a sick-fuck look at the sordid goings-on backstage at this show, with a handful of mini-plots to keep the movie from seeming like it's spinning its wheels. A frog has a hilariously intense descent into the horrors of herion addiction, a rabbit gets VD and has to contend with the sleazy tabloid reporter housefly who just wants to make his life worse, a walrus has all sorts of criminal aspirations... if these were all humans, this movie would be awfully hard to watch ('specially that frog!). Meet The Feebles relies entirely too much on its musical numbers for its funny, and most of them just aren't very good. I don't know why Jackson chose to make this a musical, but all the songs are written by the same guy except the fox singing an ode to sodomy, and that's the only song I liked. More successful, are the way these creatures try to conform somewhat to their animal natures - or, at least, our human perceptions of them (chickens running around with their heads cut off, the fly eats shit right out of the toilet bowl and with a spoon no less, and of course it's the rabbit that gets VD). It all builds up to a mostly silly "shock" ending when one of the characters is pushed too far, whips out a machine gun, and mows everybody down. By this point, I was past much caring what happened to who, as pretty much everybody was equally vile, except for what I suppose was a Pomeranian. Niche markets might not get much smaller than the one this movie was made for, though to be fair it's given rise to two or three television series in the last few years with similar premises. Dead Alive is the most obvious point of reference, and if you thought what that movie needed was fewer humans and more songs, maybe this will strike a chord with you...but who am I kidding? Anyone who might possibly like this movie would've seen it long before I did. BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE