February 26, 1996 -- ``Muppet Treasure Island'' is filled with bright colors, lively songs and colorful characters. It is joyous and fun-loving, filled with self-depreciating wisecracks and movie in-jokes.

Tim Curry plays a gleeful over-the-top Long John Silver, while Kevin Bishop is an effective Jim Hawkins. Of course, the real star of the show is Rizzo the Rat, who enterprisingly sells the voyage for buried treasure as a vacation cruise to numerous other rat tourists.

The rats cavort through the movie, taking tours of Treasure Island, scuba diving, dancing, dining and enjoying the occasional sword fight as part of they think is cruise ship entertainment. Just when things start to get serious, like when the ship is becalmed, the crew breaks out into a dance and song called ``Cabin Fever.''

There's the obligatory romance between Kermit the Frog (Captain Smollett) and Miss Piggy (Benjamina Gunn) and a cliff-hanging scene featuring the pig and frog.

It's a pretty thin story. Some of the jokes fall flat, but mostly it is good entertainment. The tradition of Jim Henson lives on in this film directed and co-produced by Brian Henson. It rates a B.

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