Muppets Most Wanted © Disney, Muppets

I am neither a songsmith nor a spectroscopist, so I can’t say why there are so many songs about rainbows. But I can tell you what’s on the other side: Muppets. Waves and waves of Muppets. Brightly colored sprites as far as the eye can see, most likely singing in unison.

Admittedly, I have no proof of this, but as one of the legions of Muppet aficionados of a certain age (this accomplishment might qualify me as a super-fan) -- those who grew up in a golden era when guests stars like Gilda Radner sang Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with a seven-foot-tall talking carrot -- I’m nervous. Tomorrow, the second installment in the resurrected movie franchise opens, and the word on Sesame Street is that "Muppets Most Wanted" misses the fuzzy mark, despite a cast headlined by Tina Fey and Ricky Gervais.

Sarah Bee, a British friend and author of the new children’s book The Yes, is a lifetime Muppets club member. She has a Zoot key ring that never leaves home so that it will never be lost. She loved the 2011 reboot, and was lucky enough to catch a preview of the new one, but ...

“After I share my thoughts on "Muppets Most Wanted," I plan to absolutely delete it from my consciousness. It's important to say that I don't think anything can truly hurt the Muppets. One crappy film is nothing. There is something pure and true about the Muppets. They are part of us, and like our best childhood memories, there is no destroying them.

"But if you love the Muppets, the movie will probably upset you as you watch it and for some time afterwards. I slumped into a bleak, gray mood when it became clear after the first fifteen minutes that it was going to be bad. I stayed under this cloud throughout. I think most of the audience did. This was an audience full of bouncy kids and I've never heard that much silence from any assemblage of children.

"I went into the movie trusting it implicitly, like a kid does, and so I was a bit hurt and sad when I realized it didn't care. The thing has no heart. That's pretty much all you need to know. There were three or four moments when I laughed a little, but the story is built on cynical foundations. Without any heart, it can't function as a Muppets movie. With its lack of sensitivity and respect, it shows a serious case of sequel weariness and complacency. And Kermit crawling through a river of Shawshank shit in Siberia?! Ricky Gervais, by the way, is an awful embarrassment to the English.”

Okay, Bee hated it. To my eyes, the trailer looks fantastic, but such a strong negative reaction from someone I trust has me thinking about the need to manage expectations as we approach these felt creatures of our youth on the big screen.

“Why are we so attached to the Muppets? Because it's personal,” Brian Jay Jones, author of the definitive Jim Henson biography, writes in response to my questions about the upcoming movie. (See Part I and Part II of our conversation last year upon release of the book.)

“There's a Muppet for all of us, and a Muppet in all of us,” he continues, “whether we're the calm at the eye of the storm (or aspire to be) like Kermit; the Just-Wanna-Please Joker, like Fozzie; the diva, Miss Piggy; the well-intentioned Scooter; the daring Gonzo; the homespun Rowlf; the hip Floyd … well, the list goes on and on. You're rooting for them. I'm telling you, it's personal, man!”

There’s definitely something to that. We all have our attachments, be it "Star Wars," the latest Jennifer Egan novel, or the New York Mets, but isn’t it weird for a forty-two-year-old man like myself to fret about a movie largely targeted at grade schoolers?

No, it isn’t. These things matter. Whatever your thing is, it takes hold and sticks. The Muppets have brought me great joy since I was a boy -- a joy that I’m reliving through my three-year-old daughter and her pesky questions about why Doc Hopper wants to shoot Kermit and destroy his dreams of making people happy.

Life is challenging, and our curated distractions keep us going, keep us connected, keep us sane. Or not. Reveling in Muppet anarchy is more than half the fun.

Beyond that, you never know when a cultural product can change your life. Last week, the New York Times ran an excerpt from Ron Suskin’s Life, Animated, an upcoming memoir about his autistic son taking in the world via Disney films. It’s an eye-opening piece, offering a fresh take for those of us parents battling the princess-industrial complex. With their family in mind, I’ll no longer watch "Beauty and The Beast" with quite the same “You-don’t-have-to-be-Belle” disdain.

Naturally, at some point in the coming weeks, I will plunk down the ducats and take in "Muppets Most Wanted" with my wife (an even bigger fan) and daughter. Even if the movie doesn’t have that certain Muppet je ne sais quoi, as Miss Piggy would put it, I’ll fake enthusiasm on the little girl’s behalf. The Muppets have been too good to me for too long to beat down her spirit like Animal on the skins. Besides, no matter what happens at the cineplex, we’ll always have Statler and Waldorf. The Rainbow Connection will never be broken.