The Happytime Murders (2018)

[baumer]

Discuss

[Ezen Baklattan]

It’s not AWFUL and has a few chuckles, but it hardly leaves much of an impact. The script seriously feels like it was a first draft.

[baumer]

I feel the same.  It's not awful and has a few very memorable scenes.  But the script is a mess and it needed much much more humour.

 

6/10

[Webslinger]

Despite a premise that could lend itself to something fun, The Happytime Murders is mostly a painfully unfunny, groan-eliciting slog that wastes the talents of its puppeteers. As films with a “humans interacting with fictional beings” conceit go, think less Who Framed Roger Rabbit and more Bright. Like the latter misfire, Happytime Murders fails to construct an interesting world around its concept and bungles its attempts to act as some sort of allegory for racial discrimination. The characters are uniformly one-dimensional, the television program alluded to in the title barely factors into the proceedings besides a couple of promos and lip service paid for the sake of advancing the simplistic plot (it also doesn’t really address how a show about puppets would be beloved by the mainstream in a world where puppets are second-class citizens), and the central mystery will have a glaringly obvious conclusion for any viewer with even a passing knowledge of Ebert’s law of conservation of characters. The fact that the film is lacking in each of those areas places the onus of its effectiveness on the comedy, and while the jokes score a few chuckles here and there, they mostly fall flat due to either not being all that funny to begin with or run into the ground through sheer repetition. It’s all a shame because the bloopers and behind-the-scenes footage in the end credits show that the puppeteers worked really hard and appeared to have a great time on set; sadly, barely any of that joy translates to the narrative itself. As a big fan of the cleaner output of the Henson universe and fellow R-rated puppet media Avenue Q, I was looking forward to seeing what the filmmakers could do with this concept; unfortunately, the end result is a crushing disappointment that lacks imagination and inspiration in its storytelling and its jokes. 

 

D+

 

Stray Thoughts:

- It's past time for Hollywood to retire the jokes about Melissa McCarthy's appearance. We get it, movie: She's fat and people (and puppets) in this universe think she looks like a man because... she's fat? It's a joke that barely goes anywhere in even its most effective iteration here (the "rotten cotton" hookers bit that has already been given away in almost every single ad).

 

- Parts I chuckled at: the terrified puppets at the bus stop telling the dogs they don't have squeakers inside of them; a few of Maya Rudolph's one-liners; the puppet with the smaller face on the top of his head; and the gag where the guy McCarthy says she wished she could have fucked is played by her real-life husband, Ben Falcone.

 

- Seriously, the humor in this film is built so squarely around swearing and sex puns that I called multiple "Fuck yous" and genitalia jokes before they came out of characters' mouths.

[filmlover]

Ended up seeing this because a friend wanted to see a movie and this was the only thing that was starting close by (also, it was one of the very few movies available on MoviePass). We should've just left.

 

The movie operates under the assumption that puppets saying and doing filthy things is the pinnacle of hilarity. It's not. Or at least not here. It runs a mercifully brief 90 minutes, but has not a single laugh in it (aside from that Ben Falcone cameo, which was more amusing than funny). Like @Webslinger said, you can see the punchlines coming from miles away. And the murder mystery is completely uninteresting. What's worse is that the film also tries to make some of the most pathetic stabs at social commentary I can remember in a movie. There's nothing clever or thought-provoking here. It's just shit thrown on the screen in hopes something, anything will land, but nothing does. And the human cast (especially poor Melissa McCarthy) is left entirely stranded.

 

So yeah, this was completely rancid. This sounds like a fun concept for a 5 minute fake trailer on SNL, but a bad idea for a movie that turns out to be worse in execution and surpasses Fifty Shades Freed as the worst movie I've seen this year. At least that nonsense had some unintentional chuckles. This lacks even the most basic pleasures in a movie: from start to finish, it's total dreck that proves embarrassing for all involved.

 

Jim is rolling in his grave.

 

F