Film Review: The Happytime Murders

The idea of R-rated shenanigans with puppets isn’t a new idea. Peter Jackson unleashed the gloriously gross monstrosity that is Meet The Feebles in 1989, becoming a cult hit, and Avenue Q garnered a few Tony Awards after its 2003 debut off-Broadway. However, it’s still a niche appeal, and it’s by no means an easy feat, and that’s why The Happytime Murders has been stuck in various stages of development since 2008 before finally getting a release now. Was it worth all that effort?

The film is directed by Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson) and written by Todd Berger. It follows Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta, doing his best 80s era Robert De Niro), a private eye, and former cop. In the middle of one of his cases, he stumbles into a crime scene, and after being forced to partner up with his actual former partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), they soon find a pattern in the killings – all the victims were former stars of the hit sitcom, The Happytime Gang. So, the two have to put aside their history, and solve the case.

Oh, and this takes place in a world where puppets live alongside people. Almost forgot to mention that.

The way the film is structured, it’s very much a riff on the classic hardboiled detective formula, or rather a riff on the Shane Black riff of the formula, ala The Nice Guys, complete with irreverent narration and and farcical details in the midst of mostly straight-faced plotting. The farcical details in this, naturally, are all about the fact that this is a world filled with puppets. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it builds a sense of place with the puppets, showing what their community is like, the unique problems they often face, and various other small details. I wish there was more to it since that is clearly where the movie has the most fun. The central mystery is intriguing on a very basic level, and it ends up taking up most of the movie’s time, as well as the less-than-compelling buddy cop beats.

I did laugh a decent amount in the film. It’s not as outrageous as I would have hoped, and it doesn’t dig into the minutiae of the world as much as much as it should have. You could say that it’s one joke stretched out, that being “it’s Muppets but with swearing,” but I think it works here because it’s simply staying faithful to the genre. I mean, when was the last PG buddy cop movie you’ve seen? The jokes all come out of the absurdity of seeing puppets acting out in a fairly standard buddy cop movie, with the occasional slapstick or gross-out gag. It is, admittedly, cheap laughs. It’s not that clever, but that doesn’t make it any less effective, for some of the time, at least. It helps having folks like Elizabeth Banks, Melissa McCarthy, and Maya Rudolph being there to sell these lines. There is also a mild attempt at commentary, similar to Roger Rabbit, where the puppets are treated like second class citizens, and Phil being the first and last puppet cop. It’s about as well thought out as it was in Zootopia or Bright, meaning not at all, but this one at least had the courtesy of not focusing on that element and forgetting about it as quickly as it was brought up.

What really struck me about the movie was less about the story and characters, and more about the technical wizardry at play. The puppeteers here are having a blast, and that energy shines through. As an exercise of ambitious puppetry, it’s an engaging watch. A number of times throughout the movie, I’d be sitting there thinking, “wow, I wonder how they did that.” You do get a brief glimpse of what the puppeteers (like Barretta, Julianne Buescher, Kevin Clash, Dorien Davies, Alice Dinnean, even Henson himself, as well as many others) had to do during the credits, and it’s super delightful to see them at work. There’s so many elements at play to pull off something like this, that the final product being at least somewhat coherent is kind of miraculous.

Unfortunately, The Happytime Murders just isn’t going to be some kind of comedy classic. There are some laughs to be found here, but it’s not enough. There are a couple shocking moments, but for the most part, it goes about as far as any other mainstream comedy. It should be pushing things as far as it can possibly push, but at almost every turn, it feels like it takes a step back. The characters don’t have much to them, which is only an issue because the laughs don’t hit as hard and fast as something like a Naked Gun movie. But it’s hard for me to feel anything more than mildly annoyed at something this unassuming and middling, especially given how engaged I was by the really great work done by the puppeteers. At the end of the day, it’s just another amusing but forgettable comedy, or a better way to put it – serviceable fluff.