Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

At times seemed more concerned with shock value than entertainment

From Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a movie so vile, disgusting, off-putting and depraved that it's kind of brilliant. Meet the Feebles is Jackson's second feature-length film. And it makes you wonder how such a man could ever end up directing one of the most successful movie trilogies in history. But at the same time it kind of makes sense in twisted sort of way.Meet the Feebles is a puppet animation. It's about a variety show which is beginning to catch success. It follows the various artists, stage hands, managers and hanger-ons during the shows and between them, introducing us to their lives, habits and mannerisms. And it's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. It's perverted beyond reason. Most of the actors engage in vile sexual acts, the janitor shoots pornographic movies in the basement with the full approval of the manager, there's gore and splatter galore and throughout the entire film there are only a few redeeming characters of pure heart, though they shine all the brighter because of it. This movie takes upon as its quest to dance across the line of good taste as many times as possible. It's black humour made flesh.And heavens help me, I kinda like it. I kinda like it a lot. It's so over the top, so corrupt, disgusting and grotesque that it transcends all of that and becomes something entirely different. Something pure in its evilness.Is it for everyone? Absolutely not! It's for those that can laugh at dead baby jokes. For those that can see the humour in the blackest of situations. And for them it's a gem. For the rest of humanity it's best left avoided.

While it's nice to see the great mainstream success that filmmaker Peter Jackson has achieved, there are those such as this viewer that really would like to see him return to his roots in outrageous, over the top low budget class-sicks such as "Dead Alive", "Bad Taste", and this memorable bit of cinematic insanity, which takes Muppet like puppet characters straight into hard R territory. These characters are cast and crew of a variety show with more than its fair share of behind the scenes tumult. The star hippo is completely stressed out, the frog knife thrower (a Vietnam veteran) is a hopeless drug addict, and the rabbit MC believes himself to be dying of a venereal disease. In this wonderfully warped vision that co-writer / co-producer / director Jackson creates, puppets have sex, defecate, swear, vomit, and gruesomely slaughter each other. Yup, this is far from being appropriate for kids, but that's the whole point, and one is compelled to keep watching this deliciously dark comedy just to see what nastiness Jackson and company will come up with next. First rate puppeteering, truly fun puppet design, enthusiastic vocal performances, and genuinely catchy songs are part of the package in this priceless puppet perversion. The characters are entertaining, too, whether they're endearing (such as well intentioned nice guy Wobert the Hedgehog) or just plain despicable (Trevor the Rat, who indeed is every bit the walking and talking vermin). The movie is a marvel in terms of art direction and spectacle. One of the gut busting highlights has the flustered, in-over-his-head director fox staging his own production number where he pays tribute to sodomy. Jackson just dives headfirst into the mayhem, leaving all of the credits for the end, and does a fun job of skewering show business in general, with the appropriate casting of a fly as a stereotypically sleazy journalist set on exposing the hapless rabbit's secret. And the jokes keep coming when we get an update on the surviving characters before the end credits begin. If the prospective viewer really enjoyed "Dead Alive" and "Bad Taste", they should find this adequately amusing as well. Eight out of 10.

There've been some show-stopping songs in the long (and sometimes sullied) history of the Movies: Who can forget Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" in THE WIZARD OF OZ, or Gene Kelly singing "Singing in the Rain" in SINGING IN THE RAIN, or "Memories" from CATS or Rufus Wainwright's stirring rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Halleluja" in SHREK, to mention but a few? Add to that list "Sodomy" from MEET THE FEEBLES. Who can forget the line: "People think it odda me, that I enjoy sodomy..."? And who can forget the worm who looks like he crawled straight out of THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO, or the heroin-addicted lizard who sounds exactly like Christopher Loyd (as "Reverend Jim") on the teleseries TAXI? If you're in the mood for some murderous muppet mayhem, check out MEET THE FEEBLES.