Positive and Negative: Elmo In Grouchland

[Censored]

One thing I've always found odd about the Bert and Ernie scenes, which I recently saw brought up at Tough Pigs, was that Bert is the one who overreacts when things get too unsettling and Ernie is the one who calms him down and reassures him that things will be fine. Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Bert should have been the one with the common sense to know that things would turn out okay, Ernie should have been the one to react like Bert did.

Yes, that was another problem. It threw their personalities out of the window.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Yes, that was another problem. It threw their personalities out of the window.

Well I wouldn't exactly say they threw their personalities out the window. While I do agree their roles probably should've been switched, I still think Ernie comforting Bert would be much different than Bert comforting Ernie. So in that respect I think the writers got it right. So in other words, I think their personalities were right, but their roles were wrong.

 

[Drtooth]

Commercial or not, it was presented as a movie and critiques, along with comparisons to Follow That Bird, are inevitable. Besides, the fact that Grouchland was in the title as well suggests that it was at least not all about Elmo. Therefore, expectations about other characters are reasonable.

I also get the sense that the film was just rushed out the gate to get this out in time, even though it wasn't a money making film in the end. Come to think of it, I have the same problem with this film as I do Letter from Santa. Seems like they could have been more inclusive of other characters with one or two more rewrites, but they didn't have the time for the project to develop. It just goes back to my original comparison. FTB was made as a legitimate Sesame Street movie, EIG was made as a cash grab. And as cash grabs go, it's okay. The biggest mistake was basically having Big Bird, Gordon, Maria, Telly, and Oscar in the film to help find Elmo, and then just dispatch with them in jail for most of the rest of the movie. I understand that Frank Oz was only available for a couple smile and waves, but they certainly could have done more with the characters they used.

Other than that, I'm sure if this movie was a success, it would have probably followed up with an Ernie movie (Sing and Snore Ernie, you see). Preschool films kinda don't do well at the box office. If Elmo in his rise to fame couldn't pack them in, Barney at the tail end of his second wind couldn't, and that disastrous and completely unknown Oogieloves thing wouldn't. Even FTB was a cult film for fans of Sesame Street. Shame we never got anything close to the original Muppet movie trilogy in Sesame Street form.

 

[Censored]

Preschool films kinda don't do well at the box office. If Elmo in his rise to fame couldn't pack them in, Barney at the tail end of his second wind couldn't, and that disastrous and completely unknown Oogieloves thing wouldn't. Even FTB was a cult film for fans of Sesame Street. Shame we never got anything close to the original Muppet movie trilogy in Sesame Street form.

I guess a Teletubbies trilogy is out of the question then.

 

[Drtooth]

Hilariously, the only reason we got an Oogieloves movie is because the creator of Teletubbies actually refused to let them make a movie based on them. So you're not far off.