These actors are muppets

Frank Oz is apparently a bit sniffy about being described as the man who used to be Miss Piggy. Here he directs Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Ed Norton in a one-last-heist movie and discovers that big hitters aren't quite so easy to fist.

Bob, Marlon and Ed play, respectively, a jazz-loving master thief, his lispingly effeminate fence and the cocky wannabe. A wasted Angela Bassett plays De Niro's girlfriend. (Well, not entirely wasted. At least the producers got to tick the boxes marked 'female' and 'black'.)

In a heist movie you root for the felons and marvel at their mission impossible. In The Score this never happens. Partly because the heist scenes are so long-winded, but mostly because Oz lets his Method Giants get away with dreadful 'improv' scenes in which Bob mumbles, Marlon pretends to be Mr Creosote and Ed tries not to look like he's on the cloakroom at the eunuchs' orgy. Which only leaves the minor characters for Oz to direct. Watch them closely. The bizarre faces, the funny voices, the tendency to wisecrack and look into the wings. And suddenly you realise with delicious irony that the director who now barely mentions the Henson years on his CV has given us Muppet Movie: The Heist.

Verdict: Sc'oreful

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