Meet the Feebles (1989) on Netflix

R19891h 37mComedy Music Musical

Heidi the hippo headlines The Fabulous Feebles Variety Hour, a variety troupe rehearsing for a television deal. Her boss and lover Bletch the walrus is carrying on with Samantha the cat.

Netflix3.5/5
IMDb6.6/1022,029 votes
Rotten Tomatoes72%

Trailer

Plot summary

The Fabulous Feebles Variety Hour rehearses in hopes that a network will pick the troupe up for a syndicated television show. Heidi the hippopotamus, the star, takes offense at Trevor, a rat who directs pornographic films, and vents to Bletch the walrus, her boss and lover. Robert, a hedgehog and the newest member, falls for Lucille the poodle and wins her over with a song, coached by Arthur the worm, the show's manager. Around them the other performers carry their own troubles: Sid the elephant trainer faces a paternity suit from Sandy the chicken, Wynyard the frog hunts for money to feed his drug habit, and Harry the rabbit is ailing. Trevor has his eye on Lucille for his own films.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Meet the Feebles (1989)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Meet the Feebles was the first film Peter Jackson co-wrote with Fran Walsh, who became his partner and collaborated with him on every subsequent film, and it also began his lasting working relationship with Richard Taylor and the Weta Workshop.
The film began life as a television series and only became a feature after Japanese investors proposed expanding it, forcing a hasty rewrite, and it ended up going over budget and schedule despite its already low budget for puppet work.
The Vietnam War flashback scenes were secretly self-funded by members of the film crew and shot under the fake working title Frogs of War after the New Zealand Film Commission's initial rejection of funding (via executive Jim Booth, who soon after became Jackson's producer) gave way to a soured relationship that ended with the Commission removing its credit from the finished film.
Every vehicle that appears in the film, including a specially built limousine, is a variant of the Morris Minor, a car that Jackson also used in his other early films Bad Taste and Braindead.
Despite grossing only NZ$80,000 on release, Meet the Feebles later built a cult following once Jackson became famous for The Lord of the Rings, and at the 2004 Academy Awards he joked on stage that it and Bad Taste had been "wisely overlooked by the Academy."
SPOILER
In a 2023 cameo appearance on the TV series The Muppets Mayhem, Peter Jackson joked with Electric Mayhem member Floyd Pepper that two of the surviving Feebles characters were now in witness protection and the rest were in prison.