The Happytime Murders
Directed by: Brian Henson
Written by: Todd Berger
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Leslie David Baker, Michael McDonald
Voices by: Bill Barretta, Dorien Davies, Kevin Clash, Victor Yerrid, Drew Massey
Action/Comedy/Crime - 91 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 23 Aug 2018
Written by: Todd Berger
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Leslie David Baker, Michael McDonald
Voices by: Bill Barretta, Dorien Davies, Kevin Clash, Victor Yerrid, Drew Massey
Action/Comedy/Crime - 91 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 23 Aug 2018
2018 is already a year the majority of us will be more than happy to forget ever existed. I assumed those feelings would be confined to politics and the music landscape. Nope. How’s this for a pop culture cherry on top for this miserable time we live in – the guy who directed The Muppet Christmas Carol also directed The Happytime Murders. That’s it. Hang ‘em up. We lost. These Muppets are not Kermit and company, but they’re still Muppets. They’re still silly string ejaculating, drug-snorting, hooker propositioning Muppets. I recognize it’s fashionable now to take something meant for children, ask what would a fraternity house do with it, and release it to the masses. I enjoyed Sausage Party, but this thing…this thing is garbage. The Happytime Murders is poorly written dreck. Think I’m being too harsh or just had a rotten day? They take the time to explain how the “Asshole says what?” joke works. Ah, now you see why this whole experiment can and should be set on fire.
In this alternate Los Angeles reality, humans and ‘puppets’ co-exist. The puppets, however, live and function in society as second-class citizens. Sure, they can eat in the same restaurants now and even star in the same TV sitcoms, but overt prejudice and even violence against puppets remain common place. Some puppets attempt to assimilate better than others. Private Investigator Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta, doing his best Robert DeNiro impression, Muppets Most Wanted) tells his brother, “It’s their world, we’re just living in it.” Phil’s brother, a former TV star in the aforementioned sitcom, disagrees. He bleached his skin to be less blue and got some puppet surgery to make his nose look like a human nose. He believes the two species are getting along just fine. The references and allusions to our world are so overt, Henson might as well come out with the slogan “Puppet Lives Matter”.
In this alternate Los Angeles reality, humans and ‘puppets’ co-exist. The puppets, however, live and function in society as second-class citizens. Sure, they can eat in the same restaurants now and even star in the same TV sitcoms, but overt prejudice and even violence against puppets remain common place. Some puppets attempt to assimilate better than others. Private Investigator Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta, doing his best Robert DeNiro impression, Muppets Most Wanted) tells his brother, “It’s their world, we’re just living in it.” Phil’s brother, a former TV star in the aforementioned sitcom, disagrees. He bleached his skin to be less blue and got some puppet surgery to make his nose look like a human nose. He believes the two species are getting along just fine. The references and allusions to our world are so overt, Henson might as well come out with the slogan “Puppet Lives Matter”.
The Happytime Murders operates as both a procedural cop drama and a film noir. Phil Phillips talks to us in voiceover in that hang-dog, cynical private dick voice we are familiar with. A mysterious femme fatale walks into his office with a problem offering an envelope full of cash for him to take the case. He keeps liquor in his desk drawer for his nightly binge. If the film were a Muppet take on noir, we might not be so miserable; however, the buddy cop drama portion shoves the noir out of the way so Melissa McCarthy (The Boss) and the Muppet can spend most of the movie hurling overly descriptive insults at one another. A routine set-up begins with, “You know what I’m gonna do…?” And then there will a paragraph long description of some sort of bodily harm performed on the other one.
McCarthy’s Detective Connie Edwards used to be partners with Phil back when Phil was the first and only puppet cop. Unfortunately, a bad situation went worse, Phil was accused of negligence, and now the world believes puppets won’t shoot other puppets. This entire part of the plot reeks of Will Smith’s recent Netflix movie, Bright, where Joel Edgerton plays the one and only orc on the police force and people believe orcs won’t effectively police their own. Not a good sign when your film and Bright bump up so close together. Gradually, Connie and Phil realize the cast members of that TV sitcom are being murdered one by one and only these two can solve the mystery, if they can stop insulting each other long enough to search for clues.
The murder/whodunit plot is the stuffing though, the background dressing. Director Brian Henson delivers what he believes the audience wants – puppet filth. Phil’s investigation leads him to a puppet sex shop where we see an octopus milking all a cow’s udders at the same time producing orgasmic milk spurts. A puppet Dalmatian dominatrix whips a fireman tied to a bedpost. Later on, Phil coats his entire office in silly-string semen for an excruciatingly long sequence. It’s not that I’m morally opposed to any of this; remember, Sausage Party showed us far worse and that was with innocent hot dogs and buns. It’s more that it’s tired and terribly written. It’s a late night barroom hysterical napkin sketch which accidentally got funded. Some things are just funnier left on a bar napkin.
Comment Box is loading comments...
