STX Entertainment
There was this show most people didn’t care for or watch called Greg the Bunny way back in 2002 which I did care for and did watch, which had a short-lived follow-up on MTV called Warren the Ape. I loved those two stupid shows, which were basically a take on what if puppets and humans existed in the world. The world was pretty well fleshed out, and it really was unafraid to go into some weird territory. That’s the best version of this thing I’ve seen (although the episode of Angel with puppets was great, although that was magic stuff, not a puppet/human world).
The Happytime Murders comes from director Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson), and was written by Todd Berger. In this movie, the world of LA is filled with puppets and humans, where puppets are second class citizens and people can be explicitly racist (puppetist?) to them in public. We follow puppet private investigator and former cop Phil Philips (Bill Barretta) as he gets involved in a classic noir mystery. It’s really a pretty rote plot overall.
After accepting a new client, the alluring puppet Sandra (Dorien Davies), Phil comes across what seems to be a serial killer targeting the actors from an old show called ‘The Happytime Gang’. After threats are made against Phil’s brother and his ex (the human Elizabeth Banks), Phil is forced to work with his ex-partner Detective Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) despite their partnership having ending quite poorly.
The mystery, for what it is, is simplistic. There are a lot of cute puppet jokes, and the pitch black humor is extremely dirty — this sometimes is very funny and other times eye-rollingly stupid. A lot of hit or miss really, but one of the issues is that Phil is so perfectly characterized in his noir detective character he’s essentially a straight man throughout. Melissa McCarthy does pretty well here, staying away from the super-annoying type she’s done far too often, convincingly acting against puppets.
I feel like the premise had a lot more potential to be truly great, especially given the R rating, but it often just dipped into more one dimensional gross out or profane R-rated comedy. It’s pitched as a ‘black comedy’ but it’s almost entirely just a comedy that’s rated R. There’s the potential to be a spiritual sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but while that movie was utter genius, this one is simply just okay.
Maya Rudolph is a lot of fun in a smaller role as Bubbles, Phil’s secretary, and there are a few other character actors showing up and enjoying themselves too. Clearly (as can be seen in the mid-credits segment), these guys came up with clever ways to pull off this movie and also enjoyed themselves immensely. I liked-ish the movie overall, but it’s really one of those things that the idea simply doesn’t live up to what it could’ve been.
Of course, if you simply want to see a decent R-rated comedy, it is that. It’s just not a great one.
The Happytime Murders has a run time of 1 hour 31 minute and is rated R for strong crude and sexual content and language throughout, and some drug material.
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