The Happytime Murders (2018, Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph) – Movie Review

How can I put this kindly? Muppet director Brian Henson’s The Happytime Murders (2018) is not a success.

The problem is the story and screenplay by Todd Berger. OK the story might be workable, the private eye/ Muppet spoof idea might have been a contender – at a stretch. But not with this screenplay. If you’re going to be dirty, raunchy and even just plain filthy, you better be funny. But Berger’s script is not funny at all. It is not in the ballpark of funny. The awful, leaden dialogue runs along the lines of ‘f*** you’, ‘f*** you’,  ‘f*** you too’.

Admittedly, the surreal idea of setting a private eye murder mystery in an alternative  LA world where, for no good reason at all, humans and puppets co-exist is quite enticing. But this movie drops the ball entirely. It just cannot find a way to make it work.

I ended up with an emotion I never thought I’d feel – feeling sorry for Melissa McCarthy, who, I’m sure doesn’t need my sympathy. But she is going to get it anyway. She tries hard to make her duff role and duffer lines work as Detective Connie Edwards, who is on the case when the puppet cast of an Nineties children’s TV show starts to be murdered one by one. But it all goes sour on her, and the smile freezes on her often understandably angry-looking face.

Bill Barretta voices private eye Phil Philips, the disgraced LAPD detective-turned-private eye puppet who joins his ex-partner Edwards on the case. Neither the character nor the vocal performance make a really indelible impression.

Elizabeth Banks (femme fatale Jenny), Maya Rudolph (Philips’s secretary Bubbles) and Leslie David Baker (exasperated police chief Lieutenant Banning) all work hard to make the show go, but still it doesn’t. Joel McHale is bad as FBI Agent Campbell, but then that is maybe not his fault as his role is terribly badly written.

On the plus side, a lot of slick work has gone into the puppeteering, as the end out-takes show, and the cast and crew seem to be having a ball making it. If only their sense of fun was up on screen.

I did not have a Happytime, and sitting there for a relatively short 91 minutes was Murder. It was one of those times when I thought of asking the cinema for my money back, but there were so few of us in the cinema that I thought it would have been unkind and churlish.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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