rated PG

No one with an ounce of love in them could want to dislike a madcap, song ’n’ dance infused escapade of talking frogs, stand-up bears and bug-eyed monsters with an itch to entertain. It was, no doubt, the goal of the latest Muppet feature’s creative team to do justice to the memory of Jim Henson and his wild little bunch of beasties. Their adoration of the man’s work is right on the screen, as is their apprehension of getting his recipe wrong. Many have called Henson a genius, and whether you agree with that or not is between you and your own heart, but that’s a lot to live up to.

Though they’ve clearly given this project their very best and most earnest attempt, there’s a significant chance that no one is going to accuse director James Bobin and writer/actor Jason Segel of being geniuses anytime soon. As fair a life lesson as it may be, it’s sorrowfully prescient that they chose to make their movie’s prevailing message, “You don’t always get what you want.”

The first Muppets movie, made at the height of “The Muppet Show’s” popularity in the swinging ’70s, was both an origin story and a natural expansion of Henson’s media footprint as he continued to mischievously bend any industry rule he needed to in order to exceed all expectations of his chosen form. Breaking his fuzzy troupe of troublemakers out of the comfy box of their television show to pursue fame and fortune on the big screen, “The Muppet Movie” was meta before meta was a word. Simultaneously celebrating humble beginnings and lofty aspirations, it was a freewheeling playtime fable about the joys of discovery along an unknown, but comfortingly inevitable road to Hollywood stardom.

That was a long time ago, though, and following that very strong start, their track record has been patchwork at best, culminating after Henson’s death in 1990 in repeated perversions of their direction (“Muppet Babies”) and multiple corporate buyouts of their brand that finally left them to languish all but forgotten in a Disney warehouse. More than a decade after their last (and least lucrative) foray into theaters (“Muppets from Space”), this new Muppet feature implodes the first big quest of “The Muppet Movie” to become everything that movie wasn't. The old gang reunites to save their abandoned theater from ruin and demolition by mounting a telethon to buy back the rights to their own legacy. It’s a tragically cynical turn of events, with our whacky puppet friends scrabbling against obscurity to reclaim the slightest nod of significance by retreating back to, of all things, the relative safety of the boob tube.

At their best, the Muppets have always shared a little wink-wink self reflection with the audience, but it’s an oddly dispiriting comment the filmmakers make here about the actual state of one of the favorite properties of their youth. The original was about the little guys making it big. Here, it’s about former industry giants failing even to make it small.

Beyond the understandable acknowledgement of Muppets as undersized things, dwarfed by their guest stars and more easily consumed in little bites, one of the more inexplicable directions the filmmakers have taken here is to recast Kermit as a reclusive has-been and resolute loser. Once a spirited small-swamp dreamer who’d never uttered the word “no” in his life, in this story Kermit’s every attempt to improve the situation are met with miserable disappointment. Over and over, he’ll have an idea (or have one handed to him by his cohorts), put his shoulder to it and give it the old froggy try only to have his spirit repeatedly crushed. When he can’t win Piggy back from her new job as a Parisian fashionista, he goes home and hires a dreadful replacement. When told how much money they’ll need to raise to pay off the theater, his first word is “Impossible.” When his efforts to put on the show ultimately fall wildly short of that amount, he reacts with a sigh and skulks out the door. He’s like a walking, perpetual second act, and never before have his knobby little eyes looked so dead.

Bobin, previously best known for directing the manic sideshow antics of HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords,” is obviously in love with these characters, and his experience with wisecracking musical mayhem should have prepared him to craft a gloriously unhinged comeback for the Muppets’ singular brand of throwback humor.

Popular everyman actor Jason Segel, who co-wrote the screenplay and stars as the big brother of a newly introduced (and decidedly vanilla) Muppet named Walter, is similarly smitten, but the pair spend an inordinate amount of energy and screen time describing the Muppets fall from irreverence to irrelevance, and in their relentless passion to remind the world that these guys were once funny and entertaining, they neglect to allow them any room to be, well, funny or entertaining.

There’s a quick spike of the old anarchy in the last reel, as the band reoccupies their decrepit theater in a note-for-note restaging of their old variety show. Though the hearts of Bobin and Segel are clearly in the right place, their overindulgent nostalgia has apparently blinded them to the core of Henson’s philosophy: keep looking forward. Keying far too hard into the heartbreaking “It’s Not Easy Being Green” side of the Kermit experience, they overlook the “Moving Right Along” part. The vaudeville only too briefly supplants the maudlin, leaving the audience with an overabundance of mournful, largely forgettable numbers that simply don’t hold a candle to the “Rainbow Connection.” Meh-na mah-na.

Henson’s ghost hovers behind everything here (often literally, his face sneaking around in photos and banners in the background), and the effect is disturbingly morbid. He surely would be the first to forgive these guys their failure for trying so damned hard, but younger viewers will lack the benefit of a previous experience of the Henson Magic.

Though their cultural impact may be formidable, Muppets by nature are things of the small screen. Their consistently hilarious bits that have popped up on YouTube over the last few years (and especially the series of parody trailers they did in the run-up to this films' release) stand as a perfectly convincing argument that the smaller they get, the better they are, and that in the correct context, they can still be an effectively strong, insightful satirical force. The big screen, however, without Henson’s hand, may just be too much real estate for the Muppets to find purchase. Bobin and Segel seem agonizingly aware of this, and their efforts to demonstrate the contrary may only serve as a bleak, sadly ironic, proof of exactly the point their railing against. Their pain is deeply felt.