When fluff on the streets gets too hairy for skin and bone, the felt has to pick up the scraps. STX For a film that has struggled to get into production for over a decade, you expect more from The Happytime Murders. With the rights jumping from several different studios, various lead actors being attached to the project over the years, and even persevering over what could have been a disastrous lawsuit, The Happytime Murders doesn’t feel like a film that has had to tooth and claw its way into existence. On the bright side, the black comedy fully embraces the grimy nastiness that comes with R-rated humor but it also comes off as feeling too comfortable as lackluster entertainment that relies solely on the use of puppets to carry the film; which as you can imagine doesn’t always work. The film itself is essentially Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with puppets. Puppets live in the real world with humans and are treated as an inferior race (complete with racist/puppetist slang) in modern society. The audience rides shotgun with a private investigator named Phil Phillips, who is still bitter about no longer being a cop. A serial killer begins to target former cast members of the beloved 80s sitcom, "The Happytime Gang," which includes Phil’s older brother Larry and Phil’s former girlfriend Jenny (Elizabeth Banks); she was the only human on the show and is now a stripper. Phil is forced to work with his ex-partner Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) even though the two still haven’t moved past the last time they worked together.<doc-sep>But what holds this patchwork of naughtiness together is some pretty threadbare cloth. “The Happytime Murders” takes place in a noir-drenched Los Angeles where “felties” and “meat sacks” live together in grim disharmony. The puppets are treated as second-class citizens, tolerated for their entertainment value but not fully respected. Just like the toons in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” The detective in this story is Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta), the first and last puppet hired by the Los Angeles Police Department, now working as a private detective. He is hired by a femme fatale (Dorien Davies) just as someone starts killing off the cast members of an old television comedy called “Happytime.” One of the stars was Phil’s brother, Larry (Victor Yerrid). The only human actor on the show (played by Elizabeth Banks) was once Phil’s lover. So there’s a sprinkling of “Bojack Horseman” in here, too. But “Happytime” never approaches that show’s melancholy insight into the machinery of celebrity. Nor does it venture into the suggestive racial and class allegory of “Roger Rabbit.” It makes a few gestures in those directions but mostly ambles along through a buddy-cop plot centered on Phil’s fraught relationship with his former L.A.P.D. partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Ms. McCarthy). Ms. McCarthy has proved her comic mettle in all kinds of company, so why not alongside a chain-smoking blue guy in a rumpled suit? She and the other non-inanimate actors — Mainly Ms. Banks, Maya Rudolph and Leslie David Baker — get to do a bit of silly riffing, but it’s mostly tired, bloodless stuff. The plot should be an excuse for comic invention, but it mostly just gets in the way, which makes me think that a feature film isn’t really what Phil and his ilk need or deserve. Like their mainstream Muppet brethren, they might be more at home on smaller screens, in shorter bits. No disrespect.<doc-sep>There’s something undeniably intoxicating about subverting concepts and ideas imbued with the warm comfort of nostalgic purity just for the laughs. Seth Rogen’s Sausage Party transformed the idea of a cute, animated children’s movie into a just-for-adults gagfest. The Deadpool franchise has built its success on turning the established framework of the four-quadrant superhero movie into the raunchiest of R-rated comedies. When it does work, it breathes new life into aging ideas while often letting audiences look at the things they love through a different, sometimes more critical, lens. When it doesn’t work… it’s The Happytime Murders. Directed by Brian Henson, son of late Muppets creator Jim Henson, the film is an attempt to give the cute and cuddly puppets that first shot to fame in the 1970s their own adult-centric makeover. It takes place in a world where puppets coexist with humans as second-class citizens, and the joke is that the puppets are grosser, depraved, and more lascivious than anyone could have guessed. Sure enough, the film gets things off to a fun and surprising start, delving into how a former children’s show puppet named Mr. Bumblypants has devolved into a helpless sex addict who scrounges around for porn and sex toys. Then there’s the rest of the movie. Phil Phillips (puppeted and voiced by Muppets stalwart Bill Barretta) is a disgraced former cop working as a private detective in Los Angeles. Phil embraces all the film noir tropes — the smoking, the cynicism, the reliance on voiceover. One day, he’s hired by a femme fatale puppet named Sandra White (Dorien Davies) who claims she’s being blackmailed. While tracking down a lead in her case, Phil ends up in the middle of a murder at an adult video store (run by puppets, of course). Assigned to the case is Phil’s old partner, human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy). The two had a falling-out years ago, which led to puppets being banned from the police force altogether. And while Connie isn’t interested in talking to Phil, much less helping him, they’re thrown together when it becomes clear that the adult store murder wasn’t a one-off. Somebody is picking off the puppet cast of a 1990’s children’s show called The Happytime Gang, and the duo has to get to the bottom of the mystery before it’s too late. There is a transgressive glee in the film’s most extreme moments There are some fun, devious laughs in The Happytime Murders. Seeing Muppets recontextualized like this — particularly in their more extreme moments where they’re dropping F-bombs or having graphic puppet sex — holds the same kind of transgressive glee as, say, Team America: World Police. The film is rude and obnoxious to the point where it’s hard to believe somebody spent money making it. And whenever the audience is thinking exactly that, The Happytime Murders is at its best. But after the initial introduction, the outrageous moments come far too infrequently to sustain the glacial pace. (How glacial? The end credits of the film roll extremely slowly, perhaps half the speed as they do in other films, apparently in a bid to push the movie over a contractual 90-minute run time.) From top to bottom, it seems as if The Happytime Murders hasn’t been entirely thought through. The movie toys with some commentary about racism and classism when first introducing the way the puppets are viewed in this world, but then, it ignores the idea entirely. The film goes with full gusto when it addresses the puppets’ carnal side — they love pornography and strip clubs, and almost all of them seem to be sex addicts — but it soft-pedals the drug front by giving them all a cute addiction to sugar. It’s a little baffling that a film with an explicit post-coital scene that involves copious amounts of silly string (seen in the trailer) still pulls its punches about narcotics. It makes even less sense when there’s an entire subplot devoted to Connie’s own addiction to sugar. The Happytime Murders also falls short on good old-fashioned movie smarts. Like Team America before it, it’s essentially a satire. But instead of action movies, Henson and his team are sending up old noir movies and 1980s buddy-cop flicks. But the script, written by Todd Berger from a story by Berger and Dee Austin Robertson, doesn’t give the director or performers much to work with beyond gags and gimmicks. There are the expected topline clichés like that noir voiceover and Phil’s doting secretary (Maya Rudolph, who is easily the film’s best performance), which pay homage to hard-bitten detective films. Connie’s brusque attitude and sugar addiction attempt to push her in the direction of a Lethal Weapon-esque self-destructive cop. But the film’s satire is limited to those checklist attributes. Phil and Connie’s relationship plays out exactly as the audience would expect, and its banality is matched only by the tepid “mystery” that ostensibly drives the film — except for the inconvenient fact that the audience will likely guess the ending within the first 30 minutes. Limp and lifeless, like a ragged puppet with no puppeteer That’s a common problem with projects that riff heavily on existing formulas in the name of satire. It’s one thing to lift plot elements and tropes to give audiences a familiar framework, but a movie ultimately needs to do the heavy lifting and build a competent, coherent story on its own. It’s as if the makers of The Happytime Murders saw the audacity of its puppets-acting-badly premise as a shortcut that would solve all things. Instead, the audience is ultimately left adrift. By the time the third act hits, it should be an exciting rallying cry, as the heroes try to finally stop the villain before it’s too late. Instead, it’s limp and lifeless, a ragged puppet with no puppeteer. It’s frustrating that a movie that seems so improbable actually got made, only to fall so incredibly short. The actual Muppets are in the midst of a new resurgence; writer-actor Jason Segel helped reboot the franchise with 2011’s The Muppets, and Disney reportedly wants a new Muppets TV series for its upcoming streaming service. It’s the perfect time to playfully subvert the brand. Instead, The Happytime Murders squanders that opportunity. This is a film with the audacity to turn the color of a puppet’s pubic hair into a pivotal plot point. But that doesn’t matter, when a few years from now, nobody is likely to remember that this movie ever existed.<doc-sep>
When the first trailer for The Happytime Murders arrived, it was clear what kind of movie this was going to be. It's a dirty version of the Muppets. What's more, it's from director Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson. The potential for something cool and different was obvious. The only question is whether the movie would hit the mark or not. As it turns out, for the most part, it lands pretty well. The Happytime Murders is set in a world where humans and puppets coexist. When the former stars of a 1980s TV show get murdered, disgraced former puppet cop Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) and human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) are forced to work together to find the killer. It's a pretty straightforward murder mystery that just so happens to be loaded with foul-mouthed puppets, lots of violence, and one wildly awkward sex scene. Still, the story actually works. While it's not hard to figure out who the villain of the film is, figuring out their motivations is a different story. The plot also opens up a world that would be very interesting to visit again in future movies, should that be in the cards. As simple and interesting as the story is, though, there is one major problem with The Happytime Murders. This adult puppet movie is simply too adult. There is a certain novelty to the idea of puppets that curse, have sex, and do horrible things. In practice, though, it's very easy to take the joke too far. Throughout the film, puppets and humans let the cursing fly so gratuitously and frequently that the impact of it simply wears off. It happens so often that it ceases being funny and instead seems like the movie is trying too hard to be edgy. How many times can a character drop an F-bomb in the span of two minutes before it means absolutely nothing? That's something The Happytime Murders is keen to explore. Likewise, with graphic content, this movie doesn't seem to know when to stop. In the red band trailer, there is a sequence where one of the puppets has an orgasm that lasts so long it overstays its welcome a bit. Somehow, though, it's even longer in the movie. There's an audience for gross-out humor that will undoubtedly find themselves giggling at these moments in the film, but just a bit of restraint would have greatly improved the movie. There's still plenty to like about The Happytime Murders, though. Strangely, building this odd world where humans and puppets live together in something far less than harmony is where The Happytime Murders excels most. From the beginning of the film, it's explained that puppets are seen as less than, and often subservient to, humans. They're the target of verbal and physical abuse, and some of them spend their time and money in an attempt to transform their looks to appear more human, while others have bought into the idea that they exist only to entertain humans. Chances are you're not expecting the dirty puppet movie to examine racism in America at all. However imperfect a comparison it may be, though, it's one of the things The Happytime Murders does well. What's more, setting the film in Los Angeles, a city with a massive immigrant population, goes a long way in illustrating the divide. The cast is another piece of the puzzle that fits well. While Melissa McCarthy is mostly doing the same thing she always does--yelling and falling down, while cursing--she somehow manages to have chemistry with a puppet. However, there is an odd running joke throughout the film that everyone thinks she's a man. It might have been funny once or twice, but by the third, fourth, or fifth time that particular joke is revisited, it's just tired. The biggest standout of the of the movie is Maya Rudolph, who plays Phillips' secretary Bubbles. She serves as a potential love interest for the former cop and manages to have many of the movie's funniest moments, whether at her desk in Phillips' office or out in the field helping to solve the mystery. If you're expecting to see some of your favorite Muppets in the film, you'll be disappointed. None of them make cameo appearances. After all, the Muppets are owned by Disney. Still, it will be impossible to look at the puppets in this film without knowing they were designed by The Jim Henson Company.