Sail The High Seas With The Muppets

After “Waterworld” and “CutThroat Island,” are you totally psyched for another pirate picture? No? Well, I don’t blame you.

But if “Muppet Treasure Island” isn’t good enough to change your mind about this kind of film, it is certainly more watchable than those other efforts.

Loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 classic, the new movie musical tells the story of Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop), an orphan with a treasure map and two spunky sidekicks, Rizzo the Rat and the Great Gonzo.

Jim sets in motion a high-seas treasure hunt headed up by one Capt. Smollett, played by with characteristic equanimity by Kermit the Frog. Also on board is Long John Silver (Tim Curry), a one-legged pirate who has no trouble whatsoever maintaining a diabolical gleam in his eye.

After landing on Treasure Island, our heroes encounter a band of wild wart hogs. They are led by a pig named Benjamina Gunn, portrayed by Miss Piggy, naturellement.

Of course, other Muppets keep popping up, including Fozzie Bear, who is hilarious as Squire Trelawney. A rich man’s half-wit son, he believes that someone named Mr. Bimble lives in his index finger.

Sam Eagle is Smollett’s toughtalking first mate, and a new Muppet - the wart hog called Spa’am - is the high priest of the Treasure Island porkers. Those old Muppet coots, Waldorf and Statler, turn up too - jabbering away as figures on the bow of the ship.

Parts of this movie are rather darker than we have come to expect from the Muppets. At least one character dies, for example, and Kermit and Piggy sing a love duet while suspended upside-down, above a cliff, by a rope that’s on fire.

“This is supposed to be a kids’ movie?” an appalled Rizzo exclaims at one point.

But the Muppets do their best to lighten the mood, especially Rizzo and Gonzo. Rizzo even books a group of vacationing mice on the voyage - rodents who wear tacky tourist shirts and react to everything as if they were Magic Kingdom guests enjoying the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

“Muppet Treasure Island” was directed by Brian Henson, who assumed control of the Muppet empire after his father, Jim Henson, passed away in 1990. Like Brian Henson’s only previous Muppet feature, “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (1992), the new film attempts to blend the modern Muppet spirit with that of a 19th century classic.

The blend proved smoother in the earlier movie, perhaps because Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” - with its broad caricatures - is closer in tone to the Muppets than Stevenson is.

But the new film works enough of the time. And if, visually speaking, Henson relies too heavily on closeups here, he also includes some lovely panoramas, such as a scene of an inn ablaze and another of the ship under an enchanted nighttime sky.

Old Muppet hands Jerry Juhl and Kirk R. Thatcher contributed the script, with an assist from James V. Hart (Hook). In addition to Curry and Bishop, the human cast includes “Head of the Class”’ Billy Connolly and “Absolutely Fabulous”’ Jennifer Saunders (who is done up to look rather like a Muppet).

Standing out among the Muppeteers are Dave Goelz (as Gonzo, among others), Jerry Nelson, Kevin Clash, Frank Oz (as Miss Piggy, among others) and Steve Whitmire, who operates Rizzo and Kermit (whom he took over from Jim Henson).

If the Muppets sometime seem at sea in “Muppet Treasure Island,” the film still has more wit and irony than most kid-oriented productions. Fozzie, in fact, has more in that index finger of his than Barney has in his whole purple carcass.

MEMO: 1. Two sidebars appeared with the story: “Muppet Treasure Island” Locations: East Sprague, North Division and Showboat cinemas. Credits: Directed by Brian Henson; starring Kermit the Frog, Kevin Bishop, Billy Connolly, Ratso, Gonzo, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, Tim Curry Running time: 1:39 Rating: G

2. Other view Here’s what other critics say about “Muppet Treasure Island:” David Hunter/The Hollywood Reporter: With a rich visual style, a complex story and dozens of characters, “Muppet Treasure Island” is too literary for very young viewers but it rates as a potent family attraction and will unearth untold riches on video. Chris Hewitt/St. Paul Pioneer Press: “Muppet Treasure Island” is good but not great, and that, undoubtedly, has to do with the absence of the late Jim Henson. You’ll miss Henson when you hear Kermit speak - it’s an adequate impersonation of Jim Henson’s Kermit but it’s a deeper voice, as if the frog has a frog in his throat. The movie misses Henson’s good-hearted inventiveness, too, but there’s ample evidence that the second generation of Muppeteers are almost as good at pulling the strings as the first.