LOS ANGELES—It was just over two years ago that Bret McKenzie was on-stage at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, collecting an Academy Award for best original song from Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. The shorter half of the New Zealand duo known as Flight of the Conchords wrote the soundtrack to 2011’s feature film The Muppets, earning the Oscar for the catchy ballad “Man or Muppet”. It was a big moment, to be sure. Flight of the Conchords has earned hearty critical acclaim and a handful of Emmy nominations, but winning an Oscar put McKenzie on an entirely new pedestal. It also set the bar high.

Returning to the land of Muppets for Muppets Most Wanted, McKenzie seems very aware of the enormity of expectation that has been placed on him. Indeed, the very first song in the film, titled “We’re Doing a Sequel”, refers to the impossibility of living up to the original, even using the line “That’s what we do in Hollywood, and everybody knows that the sequel’s never quite as good” less than 20 seconds into the tune.

“Umm, yes. But what can you do? There was a bit of pressure,” says McKenzie at a hotel-room news conference when asked if he was worried about living up to the first film’s success. “The Oscar sits on my piano at home and occasionally I’d look up at it and just go, ‘Oh well, that’s not good enough.’ ”

The Muppets movies tend to mix comedy with song and dance, which is why McKenzie has been such a coup for the newly revamped franchise. His involvement has allowed director James Bobin (also a creator of Flight of the Conchords) to build the stories around comedic actors who aren’t necessarily musically inclined, like Jason Segel in the first installment and Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais, and Ty Burrell in the sequel.

Burrell and Fey acknowledge this in a separate news conference. “America and the world was spared my singing voice, except for two notes. I think it was by design. I spoke my one song,” Burrell says. Fey adds: “Bret wrote really great songs that make us seem good.”

The structure and feel of Muppets Most Wanted throw audiences back to an earlier cinematic time, and when told by a member of the press that the movie feels more like a Busby Berkeley production than anything else, McKenzie is touched by the comparison to the late director and choreographer of the ’30s and ’40s. “It was such a golden age for musicals,” he gushes. “Those years are so influential on us now with what they did for films with the musical numbers. I’m jealous of that time, and it seemed like the actors spent most of their time doing dancing and singing lessons, and they’d come on set and know all the moves and they could all sing as well.” He pauses before acknowledging how much has changed in today’s productions. “So now you’re dealing with actors who can’t dance or sing, but they think they can,” he says. “But they’re great in other ways.”