Photo: Henson Associates/Everett Collection
Legendary filmmaker Orson Welles was certainly onto something when he claimed Sesame Street was the greatest thing to happen to television. Created by Jim Henson, the cherished children’s show wasn’t just an educational series — it provided the genesis of many beloved characters from the Muppets, who were developed on Sesame Street before getting their own series, The Muppet Show, in 1976. A few years later, in 1979, The Muppet Movie came to cinemas, launching the movie careers of Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and many others.
Henson — the subject of the recent Disney+ documentary Jim Henson: Idea Man — was a pioneer in the world of puppetry, who, like Kermit, was inspired by bringing smiles to faces around the world. That may sound saccharine, but watching just a few minutes of the Muppets makes it abundantly clear how successful Henson was at achieving his goal. The Muppets have endured so well because they’re perfect family entertainment: Kids are entranced by the adorable characters and upbeat atmosphere, while adults are drawn to intricately layered jokes, delightful absurdism, meta-humor, and a hearty dose of self-referential comedy.
There’s a lot of Muppet content out there, so to clarify, this is a ranking of feature films only, so that’s eight theatrical releases and three straight-to-video movies. None of the TV specials is to be found here, nor is The Muppet Show. Now, it’s time to start the music, it’s time to light the lights — it’s time to discover which Muppet movie takes the crown.
The first of the straight-to-video Muppet movies was Kermit’s Swamp Years, a film that boldly asks, Wouldn’t it be fun if the only recognizable Muppet were a 12-year-old Kermit? The answer is a resounding “no.” The whole movie feels off-kilter in the worst way, and it’s neither funny (or even amusing) nor emotionally convincing. The Muppets have more than enough elasticity in their storytelling to justify including familiar characters like Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear in Kermit’s origin story. But this is less about Kermit than about a science teacher who has weird trauma from refusing to dissect a frog when he was younger. The film’s only edge is that all the muppets are nude, so that’s … something.
Spoiler: Despite having space in the title, the Muppets go nowhere close to the great unknown. There’s a great idea at the heart of Tim Hill’s Muppets From Space: Gonzo has always been an outlier, and his species is often referred to as “whatever,” but Space finally answers the question of who exactly Gonzo is. His journey, however, takes a back seat to various unimaginative set pieces and tired gags, relying purely on Muppet charisma to power through. Unfortunately, the cameos — a Muppets staple — are borderline unwatchable here with Hulk Hogan delivering a speech that’s an interminable slog despite lasting less than a minute, and Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson showing up as their Dawson’s Creek characters because that was a show airing at the time. This is the only Muppet movie without original songs, a most unwelcome distinction.
The Muppets take on The Wizard of Oz in this curious retelling. Dorothy Gale is Ashanti, who longs to leave Kansas behind for pop stardom. There are some fun twists on the classic story, like turning the poppy-fields sequence into a night club, and, ignoring some dreadful CGI, the film looks great. Fozzie Bear as the Cowardly Lion is particularly outstanding, and his hair is beautifully intricate. Some good songs are in the mix too, the highlight being “The Witch Is in the House,” which lets Miss Piggy live her full villain fantasy. Tonally, it’s all over the place. Some jokes are uncomfortably cringe and downright inappropriate — a Girls Gone Wild joke in a Muppets movie? — and the final 15 minutes is especially meandering.
Picking up immediately after 2011’s The Muppets, James Bobin’s Muppets Most Wanted finds Kermit & Co. capitalizing on the success of their telethon show with an epic world tour. A case of mistaken identity sends Kermit to a Russian gulag, and he is replaced by Constantine, the world’s greatest criminal frog. Both Tina Fey (who runs the gulag) and Ty Burrell (a French inspector) are welcome additions, matching the energy of the Muppets admirably. Ricky Gervais, however, who gets the most screen time as Dominic Badguy (pronounced bad-gee, he’s French), is miscast and seems very uncomfortable. The movie’s not without its highlights — “Something So Right” is a perfect musical number anchored by a Céline Dion–Miss Piggy duet — but the third act is frustratingly sluggish and the too-scattered plot runs out of steam long before the film ends.
The Muppets take a surprising and unwanted back seat to the human characters in Treasure Island, with young Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop) taking precedence over our fuzzy pals. It’s not always a downside as Tim Curry is an all-time-great human addition to the Muppet world and frankly makes a more convincing Muppet than most Muppets do. The film looks terrific, and the puppetry shines but its ambition often gets in the way as the scale overshadows the characters. Treasure Island also suffers from a frustrating lack of Miss Piggy, who’s saved for the final, admittedly underwhelming act. While often charming, this film lacks the madcap energy of the early Muppet entries and feels more devoted to retelling Treasure Island than to delivering a great Muppet movie.
This film sets itself in the style of a 1930s putting-on-a-show musical until it morphs into a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life. Seeing Kermit severely depressed — there’s an entire scene in which he screams about how he wishes he hadn’t been born — never really pays off. Thankfully, there are some fun jokes and an endless array of fun celebrity cameos, and it’s really well paced. Whoopi Goldberg is smartly cast as God, who would much rather watch SpongeBob than care about Kermit. The straight-to-video Muppet movies have an alarming horniness, and the Muppet Christmas Movie is the oddest offender: Pepé the King Prawn is desperate to sleep with evil businesswoman Rachel Bitterman (a sensational Joan Cusack), and Molly Shannon goes on a passionate tirade about her unrequited love for Kermit. Do with that what you will.
Muppets legend Frank Oz (the original voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and more) took up the director’s chair in The Muppets Take Manhattan. This film, which follows the gang as they seek to take their college show to the bright lights of Broadway, is a surprisingly earnest affair lacking much of the absurdist meta-humor that fueled the first two films. It’s still very funny, mind you, and there’s a particularly strong running gag about Miss Piggy stalking Kermit around New York City as he develops a friendship with a waitress. The celebrity cameos are particularly strong, especially a disgruntled Liza Minnelli and Joan Rivers giving Miss Piggy a makeover. There’s even a whole plotline about rats being great chefs that predates Ratatouille by two decades.
The only Muppets film directed by Henson himself, The Great Muppet Caper is a romp through the streets of London as two identical-twin reporters (Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear, who of course look nothing alike) jet off to the United Kingdom to solve a case of missing jewels. The jokes come fast and furious, and the identical-twin running gag never fails to draw belly laughs. The dialogue is sharp and gleefully absurdist: “Why are you telling me this?” Miss Piggy asks Lady Holiday, who responds, “It’s plot exposition; it has to go somewhere.” The Great Muppet Caper is a bit disheveled plotwise, but it’s still a wonderful movie. It’s also the finest distillation of why Miss Piggy is the greatest Muppet, and she gets a spectacular underwater musical sequence with nods to Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams.
The first Muppets film made after Henson’s passing, The Muppet Christmas Carol is a beautiful tribute to his legacy. Helmed by Henson’s son Brian, this film based on Dickens’s novel may seem like a strange fit for the Muppets as it’s hardly zany. Yet the earnestness of Kermit and his pals shines ebulliently in The Muppet Christmas Carol, which is certainly the sweetest of any Muppet movie. That doesn’t mean there isn’t space for humor, and Brian Henson unlocks the comic potential of Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat by pairing them as narrators to yield terrific results. The new characters are great too: The Ghost of Christmas Present is glorious, and just looking at him cleanses your skin and clears your debts. While the Muppets are in top form here, Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge provides the film’s emotional core, and his performance elevates Christmas Carol to masterpiece status.
Walter (Peter Linz) and his brother, Gary (Jason Segel), are the best of friends, but Walter feels increasingly alienated: He’s a Muppet, but his brother is human. A run-in with Kermit, long retired, changes their lives forever as they help him reunite the Muppets for one last show to save their studio from being torn down by an evil oil baron. Bobin’s film is enormously invested in the legacy of the Muppets but also in their future. There are endless nods to the early films that all work beyond fan service. The spirit of the classic Muppet movies is alive here with the off-the-wall zaniness of the early films fully intact. The Muppets has the strongest overall human cast of any Muppet movie: Segel and Amy Adams overflow with charm and charisma, Chris Cooper’s villainous delivery of “maniacal laugh” is hysterical, and the various cameos satisfy across the board. There’s not a wrong beat in the whole film, and everything in the Muppet Show performance in the third act will either have you cackling or leave a lump in your throat. Even the weirdly aggressive in-film marketing for Cars 2 can’t deter this Muppet-tastic experience.
Directed by James Frawley, The Muppet Movie is the ultimate origin story and road-trip adventure that charts how the band got together. Hint: It’s zany, surreal, absurdist, completely unpredictable, and wildly self-referential. The unforgettable song “The Rainbow Connection” kicks things off with Kermit enjoying his time in the swamp, but a talent agent discovers him and says he’s got what it takes to make the world smile, which sends our beloved frog on a journey to Hollywood. It’s the best Muppet film at balancing nonstop hysterics with genuine emotion. Through all the outrageousness and the cameos, including Orson Welles, Edgar Bergen (Henson’s hero), Elliott Gould, Carol Kane, Bob Hope, Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, and Richard Pryor, the film’s ability to make you smile shines above all. Watching The Muppet Movie is an endlessly joyful experience, and it’s evident throughout why these characters have endured in pop culture for decades.
