Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Director: Brian Henson
Quick Impressions:
Ten years from now, who will be watching The Happytime Murders?
That’s what I kept thinking about as I watched this movie last night–will it have any legs? I mean that metaphorically since on a literal level, the film has no shortage of severed, felt appendages. Legs! Arms! Noses! Hands! And let’s not even get into the Silly String!
Honestly, this movie is not what I expected. It’s probably not what anybody expected since its aggressive marketing campaign emphasized the raunchy comedic elements of the movie almost exclusively. From the trailers and ads (and all the highly publicized push back from the Sesame Street people), you get the idea that this is a funny, filthy, crude, laugh-a-minute, hard-R smut fest.
But that’s not what it is.
Director Brian Henson also helmed The Muppet Christmas Carol, which is a brilliant adaptation of A Christmas Carol with Muppets, and Muppet Treasure Island, basically Treasure Island with Muppets. Now, true to form, Henson gives us The Happytime Murders, a film noir with (Muppets except he can’t call them Muppets, so) puppets.
In The Muppet Christmas Carol, Michael Caine plays Scrooge completely straight, as if he were acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company instead of a bunch of Muppets. When it first came out, I refused to give the movie a chance because Jim Henson’s death had shaken me, and I was having a teenage “You’re not the real Kermit!” moment of rebellion. But as an adult, I appreciate the brilliance of the film. It has wonderful music and a fantastic script that quotes from the actual text of the Dickens novella surprisingly often. It’s a great film.
Loving that movie as I do, I was more than willing to watch more work from director Brian (aka Jim’s son aka Hoggle) Henson. But I didn’t realize that The Happytime Murders was going to be so similar to A Muppet Christmas Carol.
This is a serious story that just happens to (heavily) feature puppets. Yes, it wants us to laugh, but there’s an underlying seriousness in all the performances, a real commitment to the characters.
Melissa McCarthy always plays characters with hidden, heart-warming depth, so that’s nothing new. But Bill Barretta plays puppet detective Phil Philips as if he were a real person. His life is not at all a joke to him. He’s a character whose story is immediately gripping as a drama.
Though scandalous material is certainly included, this is not just one big, raunchy sex joke. There’s an actual plot with characters we can become invested in. Often, in fact, the dramatic elements work better than the comedy (which is unfortunate).
Bill Barretta gives such a good performance that the whole time, I kept wondering, “Who is that actor voicing Phil?” I was sure it was some big Hollywood name because his acting was top notch, truly captivating stuff. Never in a million years would I have guessed it was the voice of Pepé the Prawn!
Maya Rudolph is utterly fabulous in her role, as well. She actually does a better-than-average job of making her character serious about herself and funny to the audience at the same time. Hers is definitely my favorite non-puppet performance in the film.
So this is basically a Muppet (but just called puppet) movie for grown-ups. Somewhat ironically given all the pearl clutching from Sesame Workshop, the movie is actually just as stuffed full of helpful messages for its viewers as any episode of Sesame Street. Time and again, the movie teaches us lessons. Racism is wrong. Discrimination is wrong. Denigrating and harassing women is wrong. Forgive yourself. Let others live their truths. Don’t do drugs. There’s all kinds of positive stuff in there that viewers might not appreciate since thanks to the misleading marketing, they’re busy wondering, “Where is all this raunchy comedy I heard so much about?”
So I actually enjoyed the movie (more than I expected to in some ways), but I think it’s going to have a hard time finding an audience.
The Good:
The idea of an “oh, that’s so wrong” type of Muppet movie seems brilliant in theory. I don’t know why some people have reacted so negatively to the concept. In my experience, adults who love Muppety type humor are also often game for bizarre dirty jokes.
And this movie does have quite a bit of cringe-worthy, “wrong” jokes.
Many of these are more intellectual than you’d expect. I mean, you’ve got this famous, cute character from an old kid’s show trying to conceal his kinky private life, and he’s being voiced by Kevin Clash. (If you don’t get what I’m trying to say, just Google Kevin Clash. He doesn’t voice Elmo anymore.)
And you’ve got a truly off-color Basic Instinct reference that manages to be one of the most graphic images of the movie and also a crucial plot point.
There’s some real cleverness at play in this script (written by Todd Berger and Dee Austin Robertson). We get lots of sly references to film noir related things and also a few Muppety things.
I, personally, was struck by the puppet protagonist’s name, Phil Philips. Obviously that has echoes of Philip Marlowe (though the plot is a bit more Maltese Falcon). But I couldn’t help remembering that in The Muppets Take Manhattan, when Kermit gets amnesia, the fake name he comes up with for himself is Philip Phil. That can’t be a coincidence. It’s like a tonal announcement. This isn’t Kermit the Frog we’re dealing with. It’s Not Kermit. We’ve entered some sort of Muppet Bizarro World.
I even whispered this to my husband during the movie, and practically as soon as I said this, Phil called out, “Jenny!”
I was like, “Jenny! That’s the girl in the same movie who works at the diner, and Piggy sees her as Kermit’s love interest and is so jealous!”
And we also get all of these tried-and-true cop/detective movie tropes broken down and re-presented to us in new, playful, and unexpected ways.
Arguably, one of these could be Melissa McCarthy’s involvement at all. I mean, she’s practically becoming a buddy cop movie staple herself.
The complex backstory and all the stuff with the liver and the sugar is legitimately engaging and well written. It works as genre parody and as compelling drama.
The supporting performances are good, too. Elizabeth Banks is a lot of fun as the one human star of The Happytime Gang, and Leslie David Baker, Joe McHale, and Michael McDonald also have their moments.
And if you need someone to play the female human lead in a raunchy comedy/buddy cop/ film noir send up starring puppets, I can’t see how you even approach anybody but Melissa McCarthy. She is probably the only person who could play this part, and she definitely brings charm to the role.
Best Scene:
The one part I hadn’t seen before in trailers that actually made me laugh really hard was Phil’s solution to getting information from Ronovan Scargle without him knowing. I just wasn’t expecting it.
I also like the part with the banana because of its randomness, particularly because in a movie like this, you would expect a joke involving a banana to be really dirty, but this is funny in a completely different way.
Best Scene Visually:
Eventually (kind of like with Sideshow Bob and the rakes), the Silly String scene in Phil’s office does become funny. Maya Rudolph really helps. (She’s so good in this movie. She’s like the best one in the movie, seriously. All her moments are good.)
That bit with the cow, too…
I don’t even know how to comment on that. The image feels snatched from the nightmares of the Muppet cast of Sesame Street.
Best Action Sequence:
Melissa McCarthy’s sugar fueled feminist rampage is pretty fun.
But, really, what’s best is Phil’s nightmare flashback of the incident. That’s a great scene, extremely well done.
The Negatives:
If you’re asking, “Doesn’t this movie pretty much rip-off the concept of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” the answer is, “Yes.”
But I think we have room for both a detective film about Toons and a detective film about puppets. Despite some common plot elements drawn from detective movie tropes, the two movies aren’t actually that similar as you watch them.
Honestly, though, I think this film has a problem deciding what it wants to be. Well, no, actually, it knows what it wants to be, but it also knows that nobody really wants that, so it pretends to be something else. It’s not actually a laugh-a-minute raunchy comedy at all. So people expecting that will be disappointed. But it does feature a number of raunchy, explicit sex jokes. So people tuning in for the plot might actually be turned off by that. (If you’re looking for crude, sexual humor, you’ll think, “Where are all the jokes?” But if you hate that kind of thing, you’ll think, “So much crude, sexual humor! My eyes!”)
I’m a weirdo with extremely broad tastes, so I’m okay with hard R comedy and heartfelt puppet drama, but I didn’t actually find most of the movie’s envelope-pushing humor that funny. It didn’t offend me, but it also didn’t make me fall out of my chair laughing (usually). The plot and character development, though, were ten thousand million times better than I expected. And often the gentler moments of humor came across better than the crude stuff. To be blunt, I think The Happytime Murders might take a very long time to find the perfect niche audience it will actually please.
I did like it and would watch it again in theory. In reality, though, I have kids. So I probably won’t find a time to watch it at home in the near future. Honestly, the fifteen-year-old could probably see it without enduring any lasting psychological trauma (though he might find it awkward to watch around us). And it’s not like I’m desperately longing to see it again, either. In fact, I’d rather not see it again for a while.
I also wish the movie had shown us more about The Happytime Gang and its cast before they all kept dying in horrible ways. (Too bad they couldn’t actually use Sesame Street! Now that would have been amazing, truly shocking and to some deeply, genuinely offensive. But we would have cared so much more about each of the victims. Of course, a parody of the Sesame Street cast probably would have stepped on the toes of Avenue Q.) But we really know almost nothing about The Happytime Gang. I think the movie would be better if it took the time to show us a little more.
And if it wants to knock us off our feet with shocking humor, then it needs to be either more shocking or more funny. What truly shocked me about the film was its in-your-face morality. Its marketing campaign presents The Happytime Murders as something naughty. But actually, it has a strong sense of right and wrong and wants to teach us things. So many things. All the time. (Even Melissa McCarthy’s strung out ramblings are about how this country betrayed the Native Americans.) The Happytime Murders wants us to know stuff like friends don’t let friends do drugs, and it’s 100 percent okay to be a lesbian (no matter what people say) but reproducing with a close relative is not a good idea. It’s like the end of an episode of He-Man or G.I. Joe.
I actually love what it’s saying about racism. It’s not subtle. “You puppets all love to sing and dance.” Severed felt body parts and stuffing can go flying all over the room, and yet it hardly seems like a true emergency. To most of the human characters, puppet lives don’t matter, at least not in the same way the lives of “real humans” do. The Happytime Murders bills itself as a shock comedy, but the real shock is in the drama. It’s a better film than its marketing campaign would lead us to expect. But, at the same time, it’s not always as hilarious as we might hope.
Overall:
I liked The Happytime Murders even though it wasn’t quite what I expected. Bill Barretta gives an amazing lead performance, Melissa McCarthy is perfectly cast, and Maya Rudolph steals every one of her scenes. She’s my favorite. I won’t lie.
This movie is not for children, but if you’re an adult who grew up with The Muppets, then you might enjoy watching this sordid tale of mass murder and revenge (that wants to mold you into a more moral human being). It’s pretty weird, really, but maybe not quite weird enough. I’m not sorry I watched it, though.