Movie Review: "The Happytime Murders" Is a Crime Against Melissa McCarthy and Muppets

The Happytime Murders is filled with puppet pubic hair and silly-string-as-bodily-effluvia, for an audience of absolutely no one.

Here’s a hard boiled murder mystery in which weary private-eye puppet Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) teams up with prejudiced human cop Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to investigate a series of puppet killings, in a version of Los Angeles where humans and puppets live alongside one another uneasily.

Risky, high-concept movies like this are usually described as 'execution dependent', but in the case of The Happytime Murders, 'execution' should have meant: kill this film.

In fairness, the cinematic arts ask us to interrogate ourselves, and The Happytime Murders invites us to ponder the following existential noodlescratchers:

"Why would they make this?"

"Why am I watching it?"

"Why, for the love of God, am I still watching it?"

"Why won't it stop?"

The good news is you won't need to spend much time on that last question, because the flick offs itself in an hour and a half. In fact, it crawls past the 'bare-minimum-for-theatrical-release' benchmark of 80 minutes only if you count the bloopers and making-of footage that runs during the credits.

Those shots of the Jim Henson Company in action only serves to highlight how much craft and care was put in the service of something so dumb. Director Brian Henson and his crew of artists (like Barretta, doing his best De Niro) can't be faulted for wanting to branch out with the latest entry under the 'Henson Alternative' banner while maintaining the standard set by Brian's father and company founder, Jim Henson.

I salute these brave soldiers on the front lines of raunchy puppet comedy (though Greg the Bunny did it best and Meet the Feebles got there first). However, there are casualties in any pioneer story, and The Happytime Murders leaves a wreckage in its wake akin to the ships and sailors left to rot in the despairing TV show The Terror. (Yet, unlike The Terror, watching The Happytime Murders actually makes you crave the sweet release of slow-acting dysentery.)

Todd Berger's script has been sitting on Hollywood’s shelves for years, existing purely in the realm of 'who'd be crazy enough to make this?' lore. (For a time, Katherine Heigl was even attached.) It relies on a single joke, and a bad one at that: 'What if muppets, but f*****g?' As Phil attempts to figure out who’s behind the killings, he sleeps with suspects and visits strip clubs and sex shops. Henson never actually gives the picture a noirish edge to sell the bit, hoping the visual disconnect of puppets engaging in R-rated activity will be enough. It is not.

The Happytime Murders wastes the talents of the humans in front of the camera also, like McCarthy, Maya Rudolph (as Phil’s assistant) and Elizabeth Banks (as Phil’s ex). That said, McCarthy apparently took an uncredited pass at the script, so who knows how the blame should be shared.

When characters aren’t making puppet sex puns, they’re asking Joel McHale's FBI agent, "Ana**holesayswhat?" They do this multiple times, and it was very sad to see happen each time. The funniest scene—and really, there’s only one contender—involves former comedy partners McCarthy and Rudolph, and zero puppets. It reminds us that the puppet gimmick never works; not once.

This is the worst thing any of the actors have been affiliated with, and given the material that went into the puppet cast, I'd say it's the worst thing cushions have ever been affiliated with as well. 

1.5/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong crude sexual humour and coarse language.

Header Image: Roadshow Films