Now that I'm older and wiser, I realize that dreck has it's place in the cinematic landscape as much anything else. You can't really expect each film to provide a greater insight into the human experience, toying with your emotions and leaving you awake pondering the deeper meanings that lie within it. You'd never get any sleep that way. Not to mention that Hollywood's always been playing to lowest common denominators, so viewing the current mess as "the fall of cinema" is neglecting to see the shitstains that the medium left behind. So while that teenager within me that thought only to spend his time with the Coens may see my willingness to view The Happytime Murders as only fueling the degradation of true art, I still figure it to be fine to go see the puppet show.
The gimmick of kid-friendly media going R-rated is nothing new. Many people have taken the approach of twisting saccharine animation styles and fluffy critters into foul-mouthed, sex-craven, bloodthirsty abominations. We already saw a similar revival of the gimmick with Sausage Party, a film that left more to be desired, especially by those who worked on it. Like it, The Happytime Murders takes a different approach to the standard formula, ditching the faux-Sesame Street approach and instead operating as a buddy cop film in which a human, Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) teams up with the main puppet of the production, Phil Phillips (voiced by Bill Barretta). It also brought about a lot of obnoxious advertising that focused heavily on how so edgy and crazy the idea is, to the point people would much rather stick the whole cast, flesh and felt, into a giant blender and use it as sofa cushion. But it's only gonna be one of these kinds of films for a long while, Sausage Party has yet to bring anything else with it, I doubt this will.
If you can set aside the edgy posturing and take in the elevator pitch itself, it has some potential to work as a silly raunchy roller coaster. Just keep upping the wildness factor as you go along and you'll be alright. The Happytime Murders seems to take a more muted, Who Framed Roger Rabbit styled approach and instead has the world relegate puppets to lower-class citizens, and in which Phil blew his chance at being the first puppet cop hired in LA, now working as a PI who gets hired to figure out why Sandra, the lass that causes him to jizz silly string until his mind goes numb, is being blackmailed. It's only until members from The Happytime Gang (the show-within-a-show that provided further tolerance for puppetkind) get picked off one by one that Phil finds himself back on the beat, having to butt heads with Connie to find out who's responsible for these crimes.
Little by little, there does appear to be more zaniness that does come about, though there is less emphasis on elaborate set-pieces or full-on surrealism, and more on world building and darker humor. For instance, puppets get high on sugar, so much so that their most potent drug essentially would cause a diabetic coma to any human in an instance. The reason as to why Connie can survive a hit of the stuff? She has a puppet liver. It certainly is disappointing that there isn't a big Blues Brothers meets The Muppets Movie type action scene in it but I appreciate it letting the contrasts and quirks of the world settle into the viewer rather than feeling it needs to rub its furry blue balls into everyone's face like the trailers would have you thinking.
Indeed the humor and the main performances carry the film, with Melissa and Bill providing great banter with each other and recognizing themselves as flawed cops that come to embrace each other despite their shortcomings. The other puppets work well to add "grit" to the concept while the humans tend to just exist as a matter of convention. Both have their fair share of cliches, but at least with the puppets it feels a lot more different given the expressions and voices they put on. It's not to say that Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale or Leslie David Baker don't get a funny line every once in a while, but they could have had more given to them or more creativity that would have let them be stronger. However, it was nice seeing Michael McDonald play a smarmy asshole again, he really manages to nail those roles despite looking like a relatively nice guy.
Despite that, I would still stay that in terms of comedy, the film does its part. However, I'm not just gonna give a movie a complete pass because it makes me laugh. Youtube Poops make me laugh too and I'd say they have a lot more consistency than this film. See, as much as I know I'm watching a dumb movie, I am still watching a movie. And as such, I feel that it suffers from not following through completely with the ideas it presents. This mainly takes the form of the puppet-human dynamic. At times, this is explicitly and implicitly shown to be the case, other times it feels like society's moved on from that discrimination. The shift from subtle to blatant can also be jarring given that it doesn't tend to have good transitions into that shift and tends to be random at when it shifts that dial. That's not even mentioning other aspects like playing on puppet stereotypes, Phil's former lover, or further significance of The Happytime Gang. Overall, the story has a few genuinely clever moments, more forced moments, and some moments that could have been clever but end up coming off as unnecessary. It could have done better to explore the world whilst still keeping to the simplicity of playing off its gimmick and paced itself better rather than having to feel like it needed to hit all the beats of a buddy cop film.
Perhaps I'm just warring with myself here, getting all pedantic about all the elements in the movie. The Happytime Murders is a movie where puppets say fuck while fucking and get fucking murdered. If it suffers a bit from not being a narrative masterpiece nor a properly fleshed out experience, then that's fine. All it really needs to deliver on is laughs and being entertaining. And to that effect, it delivers quite well on those criteria, fulfilling the cravings of those with that style of immature humor. It is odd how it is both bizarrely paced well (humor-wise) and paced clumsily (story-wise) and I still find it a shame that it couldn't go beyond into a silly flick that has a lot more going for it than people expect it to.But I think people will come to find themselves pleasantly surprised by some of its bursts of cleverness. I say if you just need to indulge in some goofiness, get the hand out of your ass and go give it a whirl.
P. S. - Now that I'm thinking about it, I am kind of interested in seeing what more you could do with adult-themed puppet movies. Maybe Henson Alternative might have another work in the making that could really take the idea to some new places.
