Meet the Feebles

Overview

Bearing the same relationship to The Muppet Show that Fritz the Cat does to Felix the Cat, Meet the Feebles is a gleefully rude, decidedly adult comedy about the backstage goings-on amongst an eccentric group of puppets the day before their televised variety special. Made by director Peter Jackson, creator of Bad Taste and Heavenly Creatures, the film features a wide ensemble of creatures known as "The Feebles," led by a walrus named Bletch, the show's gruff, corrupt producer. Amongst the central figures are Heidi the Hippo, the show's prima donna singer; the fey fox Sebastian, who acts as the show's director; and the lovable (and love-struck) Robert the Hedgehog. Other cast members include a sex-crazed rabbit suffering from VD, a junkie frog prone to Vietnam War flashbacks, and a rat who directs porno movies in the theater's basement. Romantic jealousies, drug deals gone wrong, murders, and other scandalous activities all threaten to wreak havoc amongst the cast, with all these problems reaching their climax on the evening of the big show (which comes complete with musical numbers). The film's extremely dark sense of humor is supported by skillful gross-out effects and a winningly irreverent attitude.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/18/2006
UPC:	0018619077078
Original Release:	1989
Source:	MUSIC VIDEO DIST.***
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Language:	English
Time:	1:32:00
Sales rank:	19,642

Special Features

Scene access; Digitally remastered; Enhanced audio

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Donna Akersten	Voices
Stuart Devenie	Voices
Mark Hadlow	Heidi/Robert
Ross Jolly	Voices
Brian Sergent	Wynyard the Frog
Peter Vere Jones	Voices
Mark Wright	Voices
Peter Dasent	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Jackson

Stephen Sinclair

Fran Walsh

Danny Mulheron

Peter Jackson	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Jim Booth	Producer
Steve Ingram	Special Effects
Stephen Sinclair	Screenwriter
Fran Walsh	Screenwriter
Danny Mulheron	Screenwriter

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Meet the Feebles
2. Chapter 1 [9:16]
3. Chapter 2 [10:47]
4. Chapter 3 [9:01]
5. Chapter 4 [13:20]
6. Chapter 5 [11:15]
7. Chapter 6 [12:15]
8. Chapter 7 [9:10]
9. Chapter 8 [9:04]

Menu

Disc #1 -- Meet the Feebles
   Play Movie
   Chapters

Editorial Reviews

Poor taste is a something easy to achieve on screen, but difficult to do truly artfully. Beyond the work of John Waters (who has made bad taste his raison d'être), one would be hard pressed to find a better example of the creative pinnacle of being gleefully foul than Peter Jackson's "puppets gone to Hell" gross-out comedy, Meet the Feebles. While Meet the Feebles has enough gory violence, icky bodily substances, cross-species sexual contact, foul language, and unapologetic criminality to appall most ordinary audiences (and, as legend has it, to cause Jim Henson's organization to consider possible legal action), the film is far too imaginative and intelligent to sit comfortably alongside, say, Shallow Hal or American Pie. Wynard the Frog's Vietnam flashbacks are both wickedly funny and more politically astute than anything in The Deer Hunter, Harry the Rabbit's extended bout with a sexually transmitted disease is a more honest and gut-wrenching depiction of AIDS than you'll see in most major studio films concerning the subject, and the numerous sexual peccadilloes and flagrant infidelities go past soap-opera level into something that approximates real human anger and anguish, albeit on a broadly comic level. And the sheer scale of the film goes beyond the parameters of a simple bad joke into something that inspires a sort of grimy awe. If you've read this far, you've probably already figured out that Meet the Feebles is not for everyone, but it's a superb slice of wickedly black satire for folks who like their humor to burn a bit on the way down.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming