The Muppets' Wizard of Oz

The Muppets take on The Wizard of Oz in this television film, which sets Dorothy Gale in a Kansas trailer park with her aunt and uncle. Dorothy dreams of becoming a famous singer, and when a tornado carries her and her pet prawn Toto away, she lands in Oz. There she meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, played by Muppet characters, and the group sets out to find the Wizard. In this version, the Wizard promises to make Dorothy a star, but only if she first deals with the Wicked Witch of the West, who is played by Miss Piggy.

Kirk R. Thatcher directed; he had previously made It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, and went on to make two further Muppet television films. Ashanti plays Dorothy, with Jeffrey Tambor as the Wizard, David Alan Grier and Queen Latifah as her uncle and aunt, and Quentin Tarantino appearing as himself in a scene with Kermit. Steve Whitmire performs the Scarecrow and several other characters among a credited cast of thirty.

The film runs 100 minutes and combines adventure, comedy, family, fantasy and music. It is a small-scale television production, and the audience scores reflect that reception is mixed: on IMDb and on TMDB it holds a rating of 5.2 out of 10, from 140 votes on the latter. A critics' rating of 4.3 out of 10, based on ten reviews, is lower still, so the film sits below the level of approval suggested by its audience score on TMDB.