An Irishman's Diary

I SPENT last weekend enjoying new work from two great showbusiness veterans: Leonard Cohen and Kermit the Frog. In each case, there had been grounds for fear beforehand that they might be past their best. But I needn’t have worried. Their latest offerings both left me lost in admiration for how well the two old performers are standing up.

It was the frog I was more concerned for, to be honest, even though he’s still a relatively youthful (compared with Cohen, anyway) 57. There was more at stake than my opinion, after all. To wit, watching the new Muppets movie with my kids, I found myself sneaking sideward glances every so often, anxious to know they were enjoying it too.

This is the fate of parents in general. You don’t see anything in your own right any more. You watch your children watching it instead. And in the era of PSPs and Pixar, I worried that a bunch of glove-puppets gently lampooning the traditions of Vaudeville might not work for kids any more. Yet somehow it does.

In fact, old-fashioned as he may be, Kermit is a hero for our age. Having first won global fame back in the dire 1980s, he is again a perfect role-model: the heroic coper who somehow keeps the show together while it threatens to fall apart around him. Even his physical make-up – he began puppet life from the remnants of an old coat and a ping-pong ball cut in half – is a parable for hard times.

No doubt it was in keeping with this spirit that the producers didn't waste money on new plot-lines for the film. Instead they bought one second-hand from The Blues Brothers(who had probably bought it from someone else). Hence, the movie is about getting the band back together to raise enough money to save their old theatre, etc, etc.

But when you’re the Muppets, you don’t need an Oscar-winning script to be funny. Actually, as both the Swedish Chef and Animal (having escaped from anger-management therapy to rejoin the troupe) both prove, you don’t need intelligible lines at all.

Anyway, when Kermit does get the gang together, eventually, and the empty theatre starts filling up again, mid-show, it’s a surprisingly moving moment. One of those moments, in fact, when I had to avoid sneaking sideways looks at the kids, just in case they looked back and realised that their father was an even bigger sap than they suspected.

IT’S AN ABSURD question in the context of movie-making. Nevertheless, I notice that many reviewers have been compelled to address the issue of whether the film is sincere or just manipulative. In other words: is it heart-felt, or – this always being a risk with Muppet films – is it just felt? That anyone would even worry about such things is evidence of the proprietorial affection in which Jim Henson’s creations are still held. And appearing for the prosecution in this case is Frank Oz, long the voice of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, who refused to take part after the producers rejected him as writer in favour of a thirtysomething who – they hoped – might be hipper with the kids.

One of the very few critical reviews agreed with Oz that the Disney-approved script was a cynical attempt to turn a new generation into Muppet brand-loyalists. It even suggested that the film’s Tex Richman, the evil oil baron who wants to demolish the theatre, should have been a movie executive instead.

But I don’t know. Excuse me for not being shocked to the core of my being at the idea that the Disney Corporation might see children as a resource to be exploited. I’m just relieved to know that Kermit is still commercially viable, after all these years, and that my own kids can leave their hand-held computer games down long enough to laugh at him.

HIS LONGEVITY as a performer and the protective affection audiences have for him aside, Leonard Cohen has at least one other thing in common with Kermit. Part of him is felt. Well, not part of himexactly. But essential to his act in recent years has been a felt fedora. Which, whether wearing it, doffing it between songs, or holding it to his chest in a gesture of humility, he plays almost like an instrument.

It might be pushing things to say that Cohen is as funny as the Muppets – although, to judge from the self-deprecating patter, his mood has lightened with the years. And he does get plenty of laughs. When it's perched jauntily on his head, even the hat has a slightly comedic effect, which I'm sure is deliberate (on one of the new songs, Going Home, he has God describing him – affectionately – as "a lazy bastard living in a suit").

In any case, his career continues to illustrate a happy/unhappy paradox: that if his manager had not misappropriated Cohen’s life savings when the singer was off seeking serenity in a Buddhist retreat, fans would probably have been deprived of a series of rapture-inducing concerts and of an album that compares well with his best.

The tactic may or may not attract new generations of brand loyalists. But I notice that as his own voice gets ever huskier, he surrounds it ever-more judiciously with youthful female harmonies, particularly "the sublime Webb Sisters". Then again, these often sound like choirs of angels. So, given the subject matter of Going Home, that would make them strictly integral to the plot.