Jamie
I’ve been impressed while researching these cycles at our recent hit rate of BMT films. A big part of that is the decline in the raw numbers, but still… we’ve watched a lot of films that make me go “Oh yeah, we watched that, didn’t we?” That said there are still some we will be missing from 2018 even after picking up The Happytime Murders. Robin Hood is almost certainly the most significant. I forgot how bad the reviews for that were, so I can’t believe we haven’t caught it yet. Peppermint starring Jennifer Garner is a Death Wish knockoff that happened to come out the same year as the Death Wish reboot, which is interesting. Finally, fitting right in with the franchise theme of the year would have been The Cloverfield Paradox. So why The Happytime Murders? We were in the market for a comedy and I recall this being a big time swing and miss. I’m also always curious when the pedigree of something like this is so high how exactly it went wrong. That being said… I think I’d rather be watching Robin Hood.
To recap, Phil Phillips is a former puppet cop now working as a P.I. Twelve years earlier he washed out as the first puppet detective after it was deemed that he purposefully missed shooting a puppet criminal resulting in the death of a bystander. When a new client, Sandra, comes in, a beautiful puppet claiming that she’s being blackmailed, he knows she’s going to be trouble but takes the case anyway. The clues she gives him leads him to a porn shop where, while he’s collecting evidence, someone comes in and shoots up the place killing an acquaintance of Phil’s. This gets him mixed back up with his former partner, Melissa McCarthy. Soon after, Phil’s brother is ripped to shreds in what looks like an accident, but Phil and McCarthy know better. Phil’s acquaintance and brother both worked on a kid’s show called The Happytime Gang. Each time they track down another of the former stars of the show they coincidentally are there right when the puppet gets killed. Or is it a coincidence? Seems not, as Phil is soon implicated in the murder when his former flame, and only human member of the show, is killed in a car explosion and Sandra points the finger at him. Phil is arrested, but McCarthy teams up with his secretary to find evidence that Sandra is actually the daughter of the man Phil accidentally killed using the frameup as revenge. After the evidence is destroyed, she breaks Phil out of jail so that they can stop Sandra before she flees the country. They get to the airport just in time and Phil is able to shoot Sandra without any collateral damage (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger). THE END
If that recap seems bereft of jokes that’s partly because the film also was oddly serious. All the jokes were visual puppet gags or a serious line meant to evoke a laugh because a puppet is saying it. I can’t tell if McCarthy is improvising lines trying to get some jokes in there or if she’s just saying what is written. Regardless, the jokes mostly boil down to “Idiot say what?” and then someone saying “what?”. It feels bad saying that the film isn’t funny because it is ridiculously impressive. If this was just an attempt by Brian Henson to prove that you could make whatever movie you want using puppets it’s mission accomplished. The best part of the film ais the behind the scenes stuff they put in the credits. I could have watched a full documentary of that. The problem is almost everything else about the film is below average.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Phil actually did do it. Think about it. He’s clearly still in love with his ex-flame. Turns out she didn’t die at all, but instead it was all a ruse to get all the Happytime Gang out of the way so she and her new lover Sandra could take the money for themselves. Sandra never kills her though. She just knocks her out as she tries to make her escape. So guess who gets that sweet cash when all is said and done? Phil and her were in cahoots! You might be like “but Jamie, didn’t he ask his secretary out at the end?” Sure, but doesn’t he have to? He can’t go smooching his gal until she’s let off the hook for being Sandra’s unwitting pawn. What a dastardly plan by Phil. (Hey, it makes as much sense as the actual plot). Hot Take Temperature: Miss Piggy.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about puppets having sex and cursing and that being the entire premise of a film?! Let’s go!
Slight buddy-cop comedies are usually pretty fun, because there is a lot to poke fun at with old-time noir films and it is easy to riff on the beats of those old films as they can be quite peculiar and specific. I had fun with that aspect of the story.
I also get that the film isn’t funny. It isn’t. I don’t know if I laughed once. There are clever moments. And there are reasonably amusing improvised bits by McCarthy (her snatching a charger off a guy’s desk and saying it is her charger and he never asks for it for example) which kind of work because she’s good at improvisation. But otherwise you are left wondering a little bit how such a nothing script was created for a complicated film.
It would be like if the central mystery of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was just a nothing mystery that you barely had to care about, with a dumb villain and a dumb resolution. The very complicated construction of putting live action into cartoons would suddenly seem like a waste.
That’s what happens here. Everything is incredibly complicated and incredibly well put together, but it all seems like a waste because in the end the story is a nothing story and there aren’t any funny jokes.
Perhaps the idea should have been similar to Roger Rabbit. The puppets are second class citizens who live in a segregated part of town, and the mystery involves a question of what a human was doing in the puppet town in the first place. The issue of course is that puppets aren’t wacky cartoons, and Jim Henson spent decades with the Muppets who ultimately just seem like regular people with regular jobs. So I don’t know.
Regardless, vaguely amusing, but a waste and not really worth one’s time sadly.
As a New Years’ resolution I’m not going to highlight dumb product placement anymore, and so this didn’t have any good ones. Setting as a Character (Where?) for Hollywood in general. I’m going to throw a MacGuffin (Why?) in there as the contract for syndication money related to Happytime being the main motivator for the events in the film. And a true Worst Twist (How?) nominee for the extremely obvious bit whereby the original Femme Fatale is the bad guy and also that the car explosion was faked, instantly knew both when they happened, couldn’t have been any other way. The film is closest to Bad, very much a not-recommend from me in general.
Hear about my new idea for a Muppet parody film in the quiz though. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 