Take the retort Miss Piggy spits at the suitor who betrays her just moments after seranading her: "You were dubbed!" Consider the somewhat existential prologue, which features Gonzo, Fozzie Bear, and Kermit the Frog traversing the main titles in a hot-air balloon (like Kermit's bicycle riding, a nice visual carried over from The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper's predecessor), reading them and asking each other what terms like "B.S.C." mean. (Aside: it's an acronym for "British Society of Cinematographers.") Their balloon ride climaxes with the introductory song "Hey! A Movie," which is performed with "Fame"-like gusto. Each of the musical passages in The Great Muppet Caper is alternately heightened and self-effacing, as were the more elaborate numbers on "The Muppet Show". (The Muppet Movie employed its tunes, by Kenny Ascher and Paul Williams, to relatively sedate effect.)

Is that all there is to The Great Muppet Caper--insider jokes and ditties? Well, sorta, yet that suffices, and as Kermit's opening lyric in "Hey! A Movie" suggests, the film has added dimension for kids: "There'll be spectacle/there'll be fantasy/there'll be derring-do and stuff that you/have never seen." Before one develops a sense of irony, The Great Muppet Caper is capable of generating suspense, with Kermit warning his fellow Muppets that they're risking their lives in trying to stop the latest heist of cat burglar Nicky (a very game Charles Grodin). I'd compare it, in this regard, to "Scooby-Doo"'s effectiveness with child audiences, who are sincerely enthralled in episode after episode by faux supernatural villainy.

The film is set in Great Britain, where "identical twin" crime reporters Fozzie and Kermit are sent on assignment, although indigenous accents prove scarce. Grodin plays the brother of fashion designer Lady Holiday (Diana Rigg) but makes no attempt to match her dialect; another American-sounding character, the furry cabbie and apparent British native Beauregard, replies, "I'm lucky to have a driver's license!" when asked why he doesn't speak in tea-time tones. (Don't get me started on the suth'n residents of "Happiness Hotel.") Still and all, The Great Muppet Caper is a foam-filled love letter to England, where "The Muppet Show" was shot, and Henson's direction reflects an intimacy with the land and its people. On that note, John Cleese cameos as a hilariously unflappable snob.

Columbia Tri-Star's DVD release of The Great Muppet Caper is a flipper that showcases a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen version on side one and a pan-and-scan abomination on side two. The transfer is nice, if never quite smooth due to an overprocessed quality to the grain. Colours and black level are magnificent, however; viewing this DVD against Disney's LaserDisc from several years back, I was struck by a heretofore-unseen Technicolor whimsy in Oswald Morris' cinematography. Kermit practically leaps off the screen, pun half-intended.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix opens up the score a bit, though the greatest improvement is evident with dialogue, which sounds less brittle than it used to. I'm not a fan of the 2.0 surround track that's also included--it's flat, thin audio of early eighties character. Columbia offers limited extra features: trailers for Elmo's Adventure in Grouchland, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and Muppets From Space, plus three Muppetisms (koans conveyed in 30-seconds by spastic Muppets) starring Kermit the Frog and Floyd, Statler and Waldorf, and Animal by himself. One hopes in vain for a Special Edition.-Bill Chambers