Judging by its lackluster box office performance and chilly critical reception, The Muppets Most Wanted obviously wasn’t particularly wanted.
That’s too bad, because there’s a lot to like about this spirited follow-up to the 2011 reboot The Muppets.
While we wait for the forthcoming home video release—billed with typical Muppet sarcasm as “The Unnecessarily Extended Edition”—here’s a rundown of my favorite Muppets who aren’t technically Muppets.
#5: Count von Count (Sesame Street)
A fan favorite from the classic television series, the lovable vampire taught me along with millions of other kids how to add numbers. Even in a world populated with a green trash-can-occupying grouch, a pair of blue creatures with, respectively, an insatiable cookie craving and a peculiar superhero complex, plus a giant yellow bird with a gargantuan fluffy imaginary friend, the addition (heh-heh) of an enumerating purple bloodsucker has always stood out head and shoulders—and fangs, two fangs!—above the rest.
#4: The Worm (Labyrinth)
Maybe it’s its British accent, or perhaps its stylish ascot, but the cute and polite yet inadvertently devious little inchworm who gives Sarah the wrong directions through the labyrinth has always been my favorite part of this mad non-Muppet masquerade.
#3: Aughra (The Dark Crystal)
The scary looking but extremely helpful “keeper of secrets” is a blend of your grandmother, Yoda and the Predator, with the voice of Frank Oz, a detachable eyeball and enough sass to move the planets.
#2: Salacious Crumb (Return of the Jedi)
The shrimpy, beady-eyed rascal is Jabba the Hutt’s taunting and laughing sidekick—he’s the Grover Dill of A Christmas Story to the corpulent slug’s Scut Farkus.
#1: Yoda (The Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi)
My favorite non-Muppet muppet, he is—articulated to perfection by the great Frank Oz. Size matters not: the legendary Jedi Master is diminutive but powerful—and more lifelike and endearing as a twitching muppet in Empire and Jedi than as a leaping and whirling CGI thingy in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
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