To be fair, The Happytime Murders as a concept has an admirable ambition. Long having wanted to invest in an honest “alternative” appeal for their puppet expertise, it’s easy to see why the Jim Henson Company was attracted to writers Todd Berger and Dean Austin Robertson’s pitch for a raunchy noir “thriller” with puppets. Almost as long ago as Avenue Q, Trey Parker and Matt Stone had fantastic success with a gross and grossly hilarious satire of Bush era jingoism via naughty marionettes in Team America: World Police, and the noir setup proved to be one of the greatest virtues of Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the granddaddy of humans-and-childhood creatures interacting. Set in a fictional world where humans and puppets share a sunny side Los Angeles, the main protagonist of the film is a hardboiled puppet P.I. named Phil Philips (Bill Barretta), an ex-cop burnout who has bad blood with his old partner still on the force, Det. Connie Edwards (a wasted Melissa McCarthy). It’s not immediately apparent what tore them apart, but it was so terrible that Phil is regarded as the puppet who both opened the door for felt cops and then slammed it shut. Yet he gets his second chance when someone starts whacking the stars of a once beloved ‘90s sitcom called The Happytime Gang. Think a cross between The Muppets and Full House, the series starred a bunch of puppets, including Phil’s brother Larry (Victor Yerrid), and one human, Phil’s ex-flame Jenny (Elizabeth Banks). But when someone murders Larry by unleashing a pack of dogs in his Malibu home (a deadly weapon to puppets), it becomes clear that one by one everyone’s having their strings permanently cut. If Phil wants to get to the bottom of things, he and Connie have to make amends and figure out why the Happytime Gang are meeting unhappy ends. Director Brian Henson is no stranger to puppet-led films, having directed millennial touchstones in the ‘90s like The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. However, neither film can exactly be called the definitive cinematic rendering of those classic tales. Rather they’re flat enough to roll over a pleasant muppet romp atop those iconic narrative beats. Left to crafting his own storytelling devices though in Happytime, this same surface level approach begins slipping into sinkholes. For instance, the film does little with the concept of adult-themed puppets living in a universe shared by humans. There are some token additions, like puppets considering dogs to be weapons, or instead of sniffing coke getting their kicks from high-concentrate sugar that would cause normal humans to slip into a diabetic coma. But by and large, their world looks blandly like our own, with the puppets primarily being a stand-in for any other marginalized group in urban life. In that way, it is reminiscent of Netflix’s Bright in its interminable refusal to say anything creative or interesting with its implicitly intriguing concept. David Crow is the film editor at Den of Geek and a member of the Online Film Critics Society. Read more of his work here. You can follow him on Twitter @DCrowsNest. Read the Den of Geek SDCC 2018 Special Edition Magazine Here!
