Frank Oz makes a puppet feel like someone the other actors have to deal with. His voices are distinctive, but we rate him most for the movement and personality that make those characters seem alive.
Fi1m perspective
Yoda’s peculiar word order is only part of the performance. In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Frank Oz gives the puppet enough responsive movement to make him a credible partner for the human actors. We warmed to him because he seemed alive in their company, with no allowance needed for how he was made. Oz also helped shape the speech, proposing that George Lucas extend the inverted syntax throughout Yoda’s dialogue.
That attention to the whole character runs through his work with Jim Henson on the Muppets and Sesame Street, and through his performance as Miss Piggy. The voice and the manipulation have to suggest the same person, without asking us to admire the operator. He began directing with a shared credit on The Dark Crystal (1982), followed by his first solo feature, The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). Little Shop of Horrors (1986) put that practical puppetry knowledge to work in musical staging.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) is a less persuasive reason to seek him out. Oz returns as Yoda’s voice, but George Lucas’s film spends too much time explaining itself and too little making its conversations worth hearing. The action has considerably more life, and John Williams’s music helps, yet neither solves the stiffness of the dialogue. We would not recommend it simply for another encounter with the character: affection for an actor should not oblige us to sit patiently through everything around him.
Monsters, Inc. (2001), in which he voices Jeff Fungus, is an easier recommendation, though the chief pleasure belongs to John Goodman and Billy Crystal. Their friendship gives the jokes warmth, and the affection is unforced. Some supporting characters need more attention, so the film offers less room to appreciate its smaller contributions than we might wish. Oz is part of a comedy we recommend warmly, rather than the reason we recommend it. Start with The Empire Strikes Back if it is his acting you want to understand, with the voice and the physical performance working together.
Biography
Frank Oz (born Frank Richard Oznowicz on 25 May 1944) is a British-born American actor, puppeteer and director. He was born in Hereford, Herefordshire, England, and later moved to the United States.
Oz is known for performing Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear on The Muppet Show and for voicing and operating Yoda in the Star Wars franchise, including Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). He has also provided voices for characters in films such as Monsters, Inc. (2001), Inside Out (2015) and Knives Out (2019).
As a director, his credits include Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988).
