You'd have to be a Muppet not to like this...

Just days after the first clever, witty, mis-directing teaser trailer (ostensibly for a Jason Segel/Amy Adams rom-com called ‘Green With Envy’), the Muppet marketing machine have released another, similarly funny and witty trailer, this time spoofing The Hangover 2. If you’re disappointed with the recently released Hangover sequel, as our Deputy Editor was, this should make up for it. Like the Hangover films, The Muppets also features Zack Galifianakis (in a cameo), and reportedly his Hangover co-star Ed Helms as well, and looks sets to deliver on the laughs.

The trailer has an amusingly self-deprecating sense of humour, featuring spoof critic quotes. Moreover, it not only catches the zeitgeist with its Hangover 2 parody, but is also funny in its own right.

And I won’t spoil it, but Danny Trejo’s line in this trailer is great. Hopefully if they make a Machete sequel, he’ll get to reference it, in a context that’s just as unexpected and hilarious.

Hopefully the people who made these inventive and witty trailers (or the Muppets who made them—I can just imagine it) will continue to do so. Marketing over-saturation is a potential problem for any film, but I could easily watch (at least) a new one of these every week up to the film’s release. And after that, they could just make an ongoing web series. (I’m actually kind of serious; a Muppet web series could work really well. And they should get Felicia Day (The Guild, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog) to guest star.)

Of course, if these trailers are made by the same people behind the film itself, then they should concentrate on that, and get back to making it as awesome and joyous as possible. Or even better, they could integrate these trailers into the movie. Why not just make it meta-textual? Jason Segel should have picked up a lot of this from the scripts on How I Met Your Mother, in any case, as the previous trailer perhaps seems to indicate:

The Muppets is directed by Flight of the Conchords writer/director/co-creator James Bobin, with a screenplay written by Jason Segel (who wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Nicholas Stoller (who wrote the Forgetting Sarah Marshall spin-off Get Him to the Greek, as well as directing both films), based on Jim Henson’s characters.

And PIxar consulted on the movie, increasingly the likelihood of it living up to its previous title, The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made, before it was changed to its simpler, humbler title, The Muppets. So, talent-wise, it’s a cross between Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, the Muppets, and Pixar, which practically sounds like a recipe for joy and happiness.

And as if that wasn’t enough, The Muppets will be preceded by a Toy Story short film, as with this summer’s upcoming Cars 2.

The Muppets stars, in addition to the Muppets themselves, Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Despicable Me), Amy Adams (Enchanted, The Fighter, the upcoming Man of Steel), Chris Cooper (The Bourne Identity), and Rashida Jones (The Office US, Parks and Recreation).

The Muppet Mindset has a comprehensive list of the human stars, confirmed cameos, rumoured cameos, and debunked cameo rumours as of January 28, 2011.

The Muppets is released in the US on November 23, 2011, and in the UK on February 17, 2012.

Empire Online

See also:

10 reasons The Muppets was great

The Muppets 'hosting' the Oscars needs to happen

15 Essential Muppets Moments

Scorsese versus Kermit for Thanksgiving box office

The Hangover 2 trailer is finally here

The Hangover II Review

Robot Chicken to release a third Star Wars spoof

Top 14 actors who could play Fletch in the remake

Excellent! Bill & Ted 3 script nearly complete

10 things that Ghostbusters 3 would need to get right

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