Suddenly... duck and roll.

A lot was made of Jason Segel playing the role of Jim Henson with last year’s The Muppets, but the finished product was a masterpiece that did a great deal of justice to the franchise that many of us grew up adoring and still openly fawn over despite how many girls it scares away at bars. Well now the old school cynics and naysayers can rest easy, because as Disney has announced plans to move forward with a Muppets sequel, Segel will have no part in it.

“It’s true but it’s totally amicable. My goal was to bring The Muppets back and I did that leaving them in very good hands, my writing partner and James Bobin the director. I did what I set out to do, and now I wanna pursue more human-related projects (laughs).”

“All I wanted to do was to set the stage for them to do whatever they wanted. I’m sure I’ll return in some capacity here and there, but that was half a decade of my life. Five years of hard work. I’m ready for a little puppet break.” (Via Collider)

Hilarious. You don’t just leave the Muppets behind. They’re a part of your life forever. In fact, here’s an idea for the sequel – the Muppets, scorned by their dear friend, decide that they will not be just forgotten by the man who stuck his hand up their backsides and then simply walked away. So they track down Segel on the set of his new film and they stalk him, ruining every relationship and opportunity that he has until he has no choice but to beg them for their forgiveness. Only then, as Segel is curled up in a puddle of his own tears, will the Muppets truly forgive him… by allowing Animal to feast on his flesh.

Or they could all sing “Together Again.” Either way, I’d be happy.

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The poster hit the other day, and now there’s a full trailer for Jeff Who Lives at Home, a Duplass Brothers comedy (Cyrus, The Puffy Chair) starring Ed Helms and Jason Segel, the two most likable dudes around outside of Paul Rudd and Sam Rockwell. Segel plays the titular Jeff, who lives at home in his mom’s basement like a blogger stereotype (I’ll admit, my hair does look almost exactly like that), and Helms plays his brother, whose wife (Judy Greer) is cheating on him (hence all hedge-hiding).

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"Don't play tight, baby, you know Thursday is sex-in-blackface night."

Nick Stoller previously directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek (both of which I thought were actually pretty funny), and now he’s back with his big chubby muse, Jason Segel, in The Five Year Engagement. Segel gets engaged to his lady, Emily Blunt (am I the only one who constantly gets her confused with Olivia Wilde**?), and through a wacky series of mishaps, their marriage gets delayed for, like, ever. The sassy sidekicks are Chris Pratt and Alison Brie, respectively. Frankly, I don’t know if that’s enough conflict. I feel like marrying your fiancee is a lot like graduating from college. You know you have to get it over with at some point, but there’s really no reason to hurry because the next stage of your life is just going to suck.
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Disney doesn’t seem too worried about Muppet overexposure (and *I* haven’t gotten sick of them yet), and today we have yet another new clip from The Muppets, starring the newest member of the gang, Walter. The clip is fairly uneventful and doesn’t quite fill me with the glee that previous clips did, but you have to admit that their matching jammies are pretty sweet. I think I’m most impressed with the way the puppeteer can perform fast, twitchy movements to make Walter visibly shake with excitement. It’s very convincing. He literally has more talent in his hand than Paul Walker does in his whole body. F*ckin’ Andy Serkis, man. What an actor.

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On November 23, millions of kids and adults who love to act like kids will be treated to The Muppets, the latest film about Jim Henson’s beloved puppets, brought to us by the Muppets’ No. 1 fan, Jason Segel. Segel and Nicholas Stoller wrote this new take, and James Bobin of “Flight of the Concords” fame is directing. And all of the marketing, promotional materials and trailers suggest that this is going to be an awesome movie and disappoint no one.

That is, no one but Muppet conservatives. Oh yes, they exist.

The concern among Muppets insiders is that Segel and director James Bobin (a writer on Da Ali G Show and Flight of the Conchords) didn’t have a complete understanding of the Muppets characters or were willing to sacrifice the characters’ integrity to land a joke. “They’re looking at the script on a joke-by-joke basis, rather than as a construction of character and story,” says one.

A small example is in one of the many trailers Disney has released, when Fozzie makes a fart joke. “We wouldn’t do that; it’s too cheap,” says another Muppets veteran. “It may not seem like much in this world of [Judd] Apatow humor, but the characters don’t go to that place.”

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

That’s right, the Muppets are above fart jokes and we should be outraged – OUTRAGED! – that Segel gave Fozzie a pair of fart shoes. And if you think that the complaints can’t get much worse than objections to fart humor, well hold on to your bottle cap collection.

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