The Happytime Murders: Does It Deserve the Hate?

When The Happytime Murders was first announced, there seemed to be a whole contingent of critics and audiences primed to hate it before it even came out. That’s understandable since it’s a low brow comedy released at the dead end of summer. It’s basically the polar opposite of a critic’s movie. The plot isn’t exactly original, with comparisons to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? being nearly unavoidable, and selling a movie on the promise of puppets saying and doing raunchy, naughty things long after Meet the Feebles, Team America: World Police, Avenue Q, Greg the Bunny, Crank Yankers and Wonder Showzen have all come and gone seems kind of passé. In fact, I doubt anyone would be making such a stink about it if it weren’t stuck in development hell for a decade and came out in the mid-2000’s when those shows and movies were still relevant. But my M.O. as a critic is that originality is overrated and execution is everything. By that metric, how does this movie fare?

Our story takes place in an alternate world where humans and puppets coexist and puppets are treated like second class citizens. Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) was the first puppet detective on the Los Angeles police force, and after a failed case that left an innocent puppet dead, became the last. Now a private investigator, twelve years later he stumbles across a case where the cast members of a successful TV show, including his brother, are being murdered one by one. Teaming up with his old partner (Melissa McCarthy), who still holds a grudge against him over the incident that got him fired, it’s now up to Phil to find the culprit before they kill the entire cast.

While trailers often tend to be misleading, this is the rare case where they let you know whether you’re on board with it or not. It’s a no frills raunch fest with no pretentions of being anything else. In fact, I suspect another reason people will be turned off by this is because it’s one of the few high-concept comedies that doesn’t use its inherently bizarre premise to rise above being a comedy. (Think Colossal or Swiss Army Man.) In terms of parody vs. satire, it’s much more Naked Gun than Blazing Saddles. This isn’t helped by the fact that it does flirt with the idea with some flimsy worldbuilding before losing interest. The puppet discrimination is an obvious metaphor for racism, so much so that they even say human-on-human racism in this world doesn’t exist because of their mutual hatred of puppets, but they never really do much with it. The Happytime Murders is a one-joke movie that rides or dies by its one joke, so if the idea of puppets swearing, fucking, doing drugs, shooting or getting shot by guns isn’t the funniest thing in the world to you, then you can go ahead and skip this one.

On the whole, though, it does feel like director Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson) used this movie as an opportunity to dump all the jokes and gags they couldn’t get away with on The Muppets or Sesame Street, and credit where credit is due, when the jokes and sight gags land, they land. (There’s a particular scene in a porn shop involving a cow and an octopus that’s both screamingly hilarious and will have you reaching for the nearest bottle of eye bleach.) But the sight of puppets having sex with each other by flopping around like rag dolls or getting torn to shreds with blood and guts being substituted with stuffing does get stale after the fifteenth time. The performers do the best with what they’re given. Bill Barretta is a fantastic puppeteer and does some amazing stuff as Phil. In fact, the puppet work as a whole is the movie’s greatest saving grace, being so impressive that I almost forget to notice how impressive it really is. Melissa McCarthy is here to do what she does in every other movie she’s in, IE fire off as much improvised broad slapstick as possible hoping something hits the mark, but thankfully she doesn’t overshadow the rest of the cast. (That, or they found a good director or editor who knows how to pare her down.)

In terms of story, aside from the fact that most of the cast is puppets, there’s not much mystery here. If you’re a fan of detective movies, especially the ones the mid-90’s like Lethal Weapon and LA Confidential, it won’t take a lot to figure out who the killer is. To give you an idea of what kind of movie this is, the big lightbulb moment where the main character puts two and two together and figures out the killer’s identity is a direct homage to that scene from Basic Instinct. Yes, the one you’re thinking about. Not being transcendent isn’t a mark against it, but I feel like with a few minor tweaks, this could’ve been great instead of a just mediocre.

Going back to the question I asked in the title, does The Happytime Murders really deserve the evisceration from critics it’s been receiving? Not exactly. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is, and if the idea of a movie of puppets doing dirty things feels like some transgressive assault on the senses in 2018, then I don’t know what to tell you. That said, it’s not a masterpiece by any stretch and I can think of a ton of shows and movies that do what this does better, and while I have no strong desire to see it again, I don’t regret seeing it in the first place.

6/10