The Happytime Murders (Quick Review)

The Happytime Murders is a hodgepodge of different stories.  It’s a P.I. film noir, with a buddy-cop adventure, combined with an adult satire of The Muppets and Sesame Street (think Avenue Q but with more straightforward, crude humor), and a prejudice subplot thrown in.  Does the film work?  Yeah, but not to the extent the trailers built it up.

The Happytime Murders stars Bill Barretta as the voice and puppeteer of disgraced ex-cop puppet Phil Phillips, Melissa McCarthy as Phil’s ex-partner Detective Connie Edwards, and is directed by Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets)—who previously directed such classics as The Muppets Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island.  As expected from a Henson production, the film’s puppetry effects are fantastically well done, with the film even giving a behind-the-scenes look at how they accomplished such during the credits.  As a story, the film has a degree of seriousness to it, similar in level to Henson’s previous Muppet films.  The film’s P.I. portion is told fairly straightforward along with the themes of human prejudice towards puppets.

It’s with the buddy-cop and satire elements that the film’s black comedy shows.  The love-hate dialogue between Melissa McCarthy and Bill Barretta is good old-fashioned witty banter, with the occasional nod towards Phil being a puppet.  A comedic scene involves the duo breaking in to investigate a suspicious house.  The two try whispering but they end up mishearing each other, resulting in a series of misinterpreted antics before they give up and shout after Connie states Phil’s mouth looks like a moving blue vagina.

The Happytime Murders trades Henson’s previous Muppet films’s charm and great songs in exchange for shock humor and crude scenes featuring puppets swearing, doing drugs, and having over-the-top sex—with one scene featuring a silly string orgasm.  And yet, I didn’t find the shock value to be all that jaw-dropping.  The most outrageous scene features a porn where an octopus puppet sexually milks a cow puppet—bizarre, yes, but when compared to the orgy scene in Sausage Party it almost feels tame (maybe I’m just becoming too desensitized to this stuff).

The worst thing I can say about The Happytime Murders is that it doesn’t live up to its outrageous premise.  The film is surprisingly tame for an R rated parody towards Muppets, with a plot that’s also surprisingly predictable and straightforward.  The best thing I can say, however, is that The Happytime Murders is still enjoyable for what it gives—with some witty back-and-forth between its buddy-cop duo and some great puppetry effects by its team.