Customer Reviews

Meet the Feebles

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

It would take someone as talented as Peter Jackson to make "Meet the Feebles" -- a gross, sick, absurd and twistily logical dark (very dark) comedy. If "Frighteners" was Jackson's version of "Ghostbusters," then this is his even weirder version of the "Muppet Show." (Not one for kids, either)

The not-so-good "Feebles" variety show has just scored a network special, with buxom singer Heidi the Hippo as the central attraction. Behind the scenes, it's another story: Heidi's lover Bletch the Walrus is cheating on her with a slinky Siamese, Wynard the Vietnam-scarred frog hasn't been able to get more heroin and is having problems with his knife-throwing act (you can imagine what happens), a rat is making pornos in the basement, a blue elephant is embroiled in a paternity suit with a chicken (guess what the kid looks like), Harry the rabbit has come down with a venereal disease, and new porcupine Robert has fallen in love with a beautiful chorus girl.

To make things worse, Bletch is involved in a scheme with underworld drug kingpins, one of whom is a whale of a problem (seriously -- he's a whale). Heidi is pigging out on chocolate and starting to come unglued mentally out of fear that her lover doesn't care about her anymore. And when the curtain goes up, will the Feebles be able to get their acts together? (I'll give you a hint: The answer has two letters)

Peter Jackson once said that he had a "moronic" sense of humor, and it shows here in all its grimy glory. What if the Muppet Show were plagued with every kind of seediness? Sex, drugs, puppet porn and some really disgusting vomiting (and cast members occasionally eating one another), and a machine-gun massacre are spattered over this story -- and while you may not want to, you'll love it. Jackson's love of splatter-gore shows in a row of birds crushed by a barrel and plenty of flying body parts near the finale. It's so incredibly in "bad taste" that I simply couldn't stop laughing. (Warning to those with weak stomachs: This movie is not for you) He even touches on some interesting questions like: What kind of offspring would two puppets of different species have?

Several of the characters are reminiscent of Muppets -- a blowsy diva who storms off when she's unhappy, there's a frog, a chicken who's had an affair with a long-nosed blue guy, a nasty little rat... any of it sound familiar? Jackson takes the concept and runs with it. And there are a bunch spawned especially for this movie, like the glittering fish that Bletch eats, or a malevolent little fly-on-the-wall who takes pleasure in spreading bad news.

Most of the characters are either pitiful (Heidi) or revolting (the lecherous, manipulative Bletch). They make porn, they dish dirt, they snort drugs, they bounce into each other's dressing rooms. (There's even a pervert anteater and a fox who does a very dignified -- yet obscene -- musical number!) And Jackson knows to balance out all the wretched characters with likable ones too: Arfur the doe-eyed worm and Lucille (poodle) and Robert (porcupine) as the adoring lovers.

The downside? The DVD is fuzzy and overly dark in places, like a videotape that has aged badly. This is a particular problem in scenes that take place in semi-darkness, which many backstage ones do. The extras are... more or less nonexistant. Hopefully this film will be rereleased in a format more worthy of it.

You might be able to watch Kermit and Miss Piggy and the rest of the Muppets after you've seen "Meet the Feebles." But I promise you that you will never, ever watch them the same way again. "Meet the Feebles" is sick, silly, and utterly twisted -- not a masterpiece, but brilliantly, weirdly, insanely funny.

Directed by Peter Jackson who has newfound fame thanks to his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this movie (his second, after Bad Taste) has to be seen to be believed.

Jackson takes the basic concept of the Muppet show (combining puppets and humans in animal costumes to tell the story about the action backstage at a popular variety show) but carries the concept to a sick extreme, creating a hybrid offspring of the Muppets and such schlock entertainment-industry classics as The Valley of the Dolls. For example, look at the absurdity of the relationship between Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog. In the Feebles, animal characters eat other animal characters or have hybrid offspring. Characters have drug addictions, extramarital affairs, degenerative diseases, star in S&M porn movies on the side, etc. There is an amazing Deer Hunter inspired Nam flashback, a hillarious war between drug dealers and some entertainment bigwigs on a pier (which includes a whale, giant crabs and a giant spider), bodily fluids fly all over the place, a massacre ensues near the end, and it is all topped of by a "where are they now" type of ending as in Animal House or American Graffitti. Oh, yes, there are also musical numbers (I won't spoil the title of the best one).

Not as gory as Jackson's Dead Alive, but MUCH sicker.

"Meet the Feebles" was an excellent movie! Sure, this movie was quite odd, and if you ever showed it to a seven year-old child, they will probably be afraid of puppets for the rest of their life, but aside from that fact, it told a tale of a variety show's cast members that was compelling and shocking. A bunny with syphillis, a coke dealing and show producing walrus, a very evil rat, a sadist fox, a smack-addicted knife-throwing frog, an over-weight and depressed hippo, and a fly who eats feces and writes down every bit of gossip are just a few characters in this weird saga. The best parts of this movie was when Harry the Hare threw up on the organ. If you watch this movie, put the kiddies to bed first because this is the muppets on crack.

I'm probably in the minority when it comes to a film like Peter Jackson's "Meet The Feebles." I actually saw this movie in a theater when it came out--long before "Lord of the Rings" made Jackson a household name. I own the DVD and have shown it to many people. I have also presented this film to several people as gifts. Who wouldn't want "Meet The Feebles" in their stocking come Christmastime? And while I am absolutely in love with the idea of this film--in truth, I'm more in love with it for the curiosity factor than with it's overall effectiveness as a movie.

I wanted very much to rate this as 5 stars. I'd really recommend it to anyone who is even remotely interested in it or has a taste for the sick, twisted, and/or avant garde. But, points for outrageousness aside--on a real merit scale, it comes in at about a 3. And mind you, I'm a big fan of this movie.

Obviously, what we've got here is a demented puppet show. We've got sex, drugs, pornos, VD, psychosis, violence--all the qualities that bring out the best in people. You have to laugh along, especially at the beginning, with the litany of absurdity. The purpose of the film is to shock and horrify you--and that it will, especially if you're not a demented sicko like me. But there's lots to laugh at and enjoy.

If the film were half as long (it's 97 minutes), I'd have gone 5 stars for it keeping up the insane momentum. However, at full length--it does get a bit repetitive. Shock value only takes you so far, and when you've set the bar so high at the beginning--things will eventually begin to lag. So while I respect and love this film on many levels, it just fails to sustain itself. Every time I watch it, I'm glad when it ends--but that doesn't mean I won't watch it again or pass it on to another unsuspecting soul to warp their fragile mind. KGHarris, 10/06.

This movie is in a class by itself, elevating black humor to another plane entirely with its subversion of the cute, fondly-remembered TV puppets of our childhood into a hysterically disturbed, sordid, wretched, warped, sex-and-drugs vision of show-biz puppethood. Peter Jackson might well be a miscegenation of Jim Henson and Hunter S. Thompson. Miscegenation itself is even a theme in this movie, which sports the grotesque offspring of an elephant and a chicken in one scene, and interspecies B&D sex between a cow and a cockroach (being filmed by a rat pornographer) in another. Boundaries of taste you weren't even aware of are crossed with evil glee. It was physically exhausting to watch this movie, which made me laugh almost to the point of asphyxiation.

A friend of mine asked me to watch Peter Jacksons Meet the Feebles one day and after seeing two of his other films (Heavenly Creatures,overratted....The Frightners...Very good) I thought third time was a charm so I watched it. Then I watched it agian becouse the first time I had no idea what to make of it. After watching it a second time I must admit that as much as I wanted to hate this movie I just couldn't.
The plot is simple enough. Meet the Feebles is the name of of a tv show that has plans to go national (The same as the Muppets) however any comparison to the Muppets ends when the shows production manager, a rat named Trevor, calls the show's star a hippo named Hidi, a fat slag, from there the movie just gets stranger. The charactors ars as follows, Treveo the rat who in his spare time makes porn/snuff films in the theaters basement for Bletch the barins behind the Feebles,he's a drug dealing,womenizing walrus and the love of Hidi's life. There's a Vienam Vet knife thrower who is now a hedion addict,a love sick newcommer, a deadbeat dad of an elephant, and a fox who tries to save the show by singing his famous song Sodamy (I'm not kidding).
For all it's strangness the is a real likability to the movie, the charators are well devloped and the music (all original) is at time's quite good. Although Jackson will be remembered for Lord Of The Rings Meet the Feebles is one hell of a ride worth taking.
One word of warning do not think just becouse it's a "puppet" movie that children have any buissiness watching this film. It is this generations Friz the Cat...

Conservatives will hate this movie. Liberals will say its gone too far. Parents will ban it from their homes. And I loved every minute of it. A friend and I rented it not knowing what it was, all we knew was on the back of the box it had a muppet firing a heavy machine gun. At one point we fell off the couch laughing and had to rewind for 5 whole minutes (not rewind 5 minutes worth of movie mind you, five minutes in RL time)! I love this movie! It's sick! It's warped! It's not for the easily offended! It's not for my parents! It's hillarious! It's disgusting! It's the best movie I've ever seen.....well, next to Star Wars trilogy.

This ranks with "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" as two of the best movie musicals ever made.

I've always said to anyone who would listen that this is, in my opinion, Peter Jackson's magnum opus. And I'm talking about the REAL Peter Jackson, not the hired gun (wisely) brought in to juice up LOTR, which it badly needed after Terry Gilliam got detached. LOTR is exemplary fantasy, to be sure. But "Meet The Feebles" is exemplary filmmaking.

No one has the slightest clue about how difficult it is to make a film, let alone one starring only puppets. Jackson's direction is unbelievably clever yet plays a trick on the viewer: you're gonna forget that these are puppets after -- maybe -- seven minutes, these characters are so unique and well-developed. Plus the shoestring budget could only have been aided by imagination, so fortunately Jackson has that in spades.

The draw of such an ambitious, utterly uncompromising project as this lives inside the dialogue and interaction, not plot progression. You want the plot? A chronicle of the twelve hours leading up to the infamous "Feebles Variety Hour Massacre" that would forever shake the world of Puppeton. There, that's the plot. If puppets acted as crazed, stoned, and unpredictably as ordinary people, that hypothesis is fully realized in "Meet The Feebles." And, though too many people cannot help but grimace and make yucky-face whenever someone spits out this title, this is one of the most brazenly hilarious and smartest satires on the entertainment industry I've seen yet. Yes, hilarious as in "funny". Even when the lines aren't funny, their delivery certainly is. "Did I tell you Sandy's slapping a paternity suit on me?" -- is straight outta Liverpool, baby.

Everyone else that reviews this has given you the cast roster, so I won't bother. But the true scene-stealers are Trevor, Winyard, Louie and Heidi at the finale, for obvious reasons. Star-crossed lovers get engaged after nine hours of knowing each other. A bloated "Feeble" producer screws a pussycat behind his wife's back while drug-dealing with underworld kingpins. A pesky fly-on-the-wall extorts a disease-ridden bunny out of his life insurance just to keep his sex scandal out of the hotsheets. And a 'Nam-vet frog suffers through combat flashbacks and hustles his next quick dope fix before his big knife-throwing routine. Oh, and a perverted, panty-sniffing anteater holds the key to the next evolution in hardcore bondage films... These are the dreams that Peter Jackson is made of.

Christ, I quote from this film almost every day, the dialogue is THAT good. Even if Jackson's self-proclaimed sense of humor is moronic, it's probably some of the smartest idiocy ever produced. That aside, yes, indeed the film is, above all, very creepy, very lurid, very disturbing. The puppets themselves look like something split between your best childhood imaginary friend and your worst nightmare simultaneously. (Jackson also helped design the puppets as well as being the camera operator, co-writer, co-producer and director.) Ah yes, the sheer thrill of guerrilla filmmaking, and this is a prime example of it, folks. He photographs the puppets as he would real people, thereby disjoining your association that these are just pieces of designer fabric with human hands shoved up the wah-zoo, or life-sized costumes, or marionettes, or whatever.

And did I mention the songs in this film? They're fabulous. Catchy, simple, stuck in your head for days. "One Leg Missing", sung by a blunt-smoking Raasta-dog, is my favorite.

Forget the fact that what these puppets are doing is vile and degradable, because actual people do all of these things, too. Is this film for kids? Holy S---, NO! Is it an acquired taste? Hell yes, it is. Is it wholy unpleasant and something that can make you nauseous just watching it? Abso-flogging-lutely, people! Is "Meet The Feebles" so consciously tasteless that it achieves its own level of absurdist brilliance through its stabs at all the worst human vices, and can stand on its own as a superb puppet film, musical, comedy, and low-budget creep exercise...?

Rah-ther.

"Meet the Feebles" is one of the most disgusting movies of all time, but this is the charm of the movie. It repulses the viewer while at the same time making the average person laugh at its filthiness. My only complaint is that the movie is slugish in several spots and often gets caught in a web of problems because of this, but overall it is a must see.

Those of you who are familiar with Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive" will love this movie. I guarantee it. Very similiar cinematogrophy and music, and a sick subject matter. When i first put the tape in and pressed play, i had no idea what to make. A bunch of puppets singing... yawn ... But once the backstage antics kick in, i was glued. The best scene in the film has to be the heroin junkie's NAM flashback. Absolutely hilarious! I will admit, there are some scenes that kinda dragged on and created no real interest for me, but those were few and far between compared to the ones that made me laugh with disgust. If you are Peter Jackson fan, BUY THIS FILM!