The movie of the play of the movie, based on the popular stage musical and more distantly on Roger Corman’s original grungy wonder. For a while it’s hard to tell whether director Frank Oz is adapting off-Broadway Corman or remaking King Vidor’s Street Scene as the great American slum musical, but soon enough he leaves the social-realist window dressing behind to get on with the real business of staring down assorted Muppet maws. Rick Moranis is properly nerdish as the flower-shop attendant who keeps his carnivorous charge supplied with a steady stream of human plasma, and Ellen Greene makes a good scatterbrained innocent in the ersatz Broadway mold, but the best moments in this 1987 release belong to Dr. Steve Martin as a dentist with a professional yen for pain. With Vincent Gardenia, and cameos by Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, and John Candy.