THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS (2018)

Studio:       STX Films
Director:    Brian Henson
Writer:       Todd Berger, Dee Austin Robertson
Producer:  Brian Henson, Jeffrey Hayes, Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone
Stars:     Melissa McCarthy, Bill Barretta, Joel McHale, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, Elizabeth Banks

Review Score:

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Summary:

A disgraced detective must reteam with his former partner to find a killer targeting the stars of a puppet TV show.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Disgraced former police officer Phil Philips, a puppet in Los Angeles where humans and puppets coexist, arrives at the office where he now works as a private investigator. After a brief conversation with his adoring receptionist Bubbles, Phil meets his new client, Sandra White. Sandra hires Phil to find out who has been threatening to publicly expose her as a sex addict.

Recognizing a letter in Sandra’s blackmail note as having been cut from Puppet Pussy Party magazine, Phil begins his investigation at Vinny’s Puppet Pleasureland sex shop. Phil recognizes one of the store’s patrons as Augustus Bumblypants, a puppet actor from “The Happytime Gang” TV show. While Phil researches customer records in the back, someone enters the store and shoots Vinny, an octopus and a cow filming an underground porno behind the counter, and Mr. Bumblypants.

Detective Connie Edwards, who was Phil’s partner when he was a cop, investigates the crime scene with the police. After Phil and Edwards engage in a contentious conversation, Edwards’ boss Lieutenant Banning dismisses Phil as a witness.

Phil meets his brother Larry Shenanigans, who also starred on “The Happytime Gang,” for lunch. Larry mentions that residuals from the once-popular show have become more lucrative since a recent syndication deal. Phil has another uncomfortable encounter with Edwards when he leaves the restaurant.

Drinking alone in his office later, Phil goes through newspaper clippings documenting how he fell from grace as an officer after a shooting incident. Edwards testified against Phil, furthering public perception that Phil deliberately missed when he fired at a suspect because he wouldn’t shoot another puppet. The incident also led to the creation of “The Philips Code,” which prohibits puppets from being police officers. Bubbles asks Phil to go out for a drink, but Phil politely declines.

Larry hosts human Brittenie Marlowe for a date at home. While Brittenie blends margaritas, the killer sneaks in and releases dogs that tear Larry apart.

As police process the scene the next day, Phil and Edwards end up physically fighting after falling into Larry’s hot tub. Banning admonishes both of them before forcing Edwards and Phil to work together when they realize someone is murdering “The Happytime Gang” cast members.

Phil and Edwards question “The Happytime Gang’s” human producer Ronovan Scargle. After Scargle insults puppets, Phil knocks him out. Phil and Edwards steal “The Happytime Gang” contract.

The contract reveals that the show’s seven principal actors are guaranteed to split ten million dollars from their syndication deal. If a cast member is dead, that share either goes to a spouse or is divided among the other remaining cast members. Phil and Edwards conclude that someone in “The Happytime Gang” is committing the murders to get a bigger payout.

Phil and Edwards find former cast member Lyle Finkelstein at his auto repair shop that doubles as a Skid Row drug den. Edwards, who has a puppet liver from a transplant, gets high on sugar and fights with Lyle’s gun-toting gang during a card game. Staging a drive-by, the killer guns down Lyle and two of his cronies in an alleyway outside.

Phil stops by his office the next day to meet with Sandra again. Sandra presents a blackmail photo of her with Jenny Peterson, the one human member of “The Happytime Gang” and Phil’s former girlfriend. Sandra seduces Phil into having sex.

Banning arrives at Phil’s office with Special Agent Campbell from the FBI, who suspects Phil might be the murderer. Phil sneaks out of the building using the fire escape.

Edwards traces former “The Happytime Gang” cast member Goofer to a Santa Monica drug den where he is now a burnout addict. In response to Edwards’ questions about the murders, Goofer cryptically mentions the word “wife” before passing out.

Phil goes to see Jenny at the strip club where she currently dances. Jenny claims to not recognize Sandra White from the photo. Following a conversation about their broken relationship, Phil walks Jenny to her car, which suddenly explodes when Jenny starts the engine. Jenny seemingly burns to death. Cops see Phil at the scene, forcing him to flee.

Phil hides out in Edwards’ apartment. Phil dreams of the shooting incident when his bullet missed the suspect holding Edwards hostage and killed a bystander in front of his daughter. Edwards claims to not know where Phil is when Banning calls to report that Goofer washed up dead underneath a pier.

Based on Goofer’s “wife” clue, Phil and Edwards drive to Lancaster to question married cast members Ezra and Cara, who are also cousins. On the drive, Phil and Edwards make amends with each other.

At Ezra and Cara’s desert ranch, Phil and Edwards find the couple’s inbred children. They also find Ezra and Cara’s dead bodies before chasing the killer outside.

Phil and Edwards run into a standoff with Agent Campbell and the police. Phil is arrested.

At the police station, Banning allows Phil and Edwards to watch Campbell question Sandra in another room. Phil finds out that Sandra is actually married to Jenny Peterson and orchestrated events to frame Phil for the murders. When Sandra uncrosses her legs to seduce Campbell, everyone sees that she has purple pubic hair, even though the hair on her head is red.

Campbell accuses Phil of murder and insults Edwards for having a puppet liver. Campbell suspends Edwards after she assaults him.

Bubbles convinces Edwards to sneak into Sandra’s Hollywood apartment where they find a room full of evidence proving Sandra executed “The Happytime Gang.” A photo also reveals that Sandra was the purple-haired daughter of Jasper Jakoby, the bystander accidentally killed by Phil’s bullet. Bubbles inadvertently triggers a booby trap that incinerates the room.

Edwards tells Phil the truth about Sandra White. Edwards then shoots Phil in his arm to get him out of jail and into an ambulance. Edwards hijacks the ambulance.

Bubbles calls with a tip that Sandra booked a private plane to Rio. After they race to the Santa Monica airport, Phil handcuffs Edwards to the ambulance’s steering wheel so he can face Sandra alone.

Phil confronts Sandra over her revenge-murder plot. Jenny enters, revealing she faked her death and was in on the plan to take the ten million dollars of TV show residuals. However, Sandra suddenly knocks Jenny unconscious and calls in four henchmen who take Phil outside.

The henchmen throw Phil into an airplane engine, but Phil manages to hold onto its side. Having escaped the ambulance by removing the steering wheel, Edwards takes down the henchmen and rescues Phil.

Edwards boards the plane looking for Sandra. Sandra takes Edwards at gunpoint and escorts her back to the runway. Phil draws his handgun, facing a situation similar to when he accidentally shot Jasper Jakoby. This time, Phil’s bullet strikes and kills Sandra.

Recovering in an ambulance afterward, Phil and Bubbles arrange to go out on a date. Banning arrives to relay that The Philips Code has been repealed. Banning reinstates both Edwards and Phil as police officers. Campbell apologizes, but Edwards and Phil still laughingly insult him.

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Review:

Some might hate on “The Happytime Murders” sight unseen purely at a fundamental level.  By design, the film features distinctly Henson-esque puppets misbehaving in outrageously lewd, crude, mean, and unclean manners.  Prude parents or watchdog types who sanctify Sesame Street as sacred ground might misperceive it as disrespectful to the brands that that birthed them for Kermit-like creations to engage in sex, drugs, and murder, or any other salacious activity guaranteed to make Big Bird blush.

Alternatively, one can dislike “The Happytime Murders” for a far more practical reason.  That reason being that the supposed “comedy” disastrously disappoints.  This has nothing to do with irreverent attitude and everything to do with being executed awfully.

To be clear, I’m in the latter camp.  I enjoy it when something I appreciated as a kid can reposition its appeal according to adult tastes, no matter how intentionally immature.  I hoped the movie would make good on the promise of Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles” by being as close to an “official” perverted Muppets parody like only director Brian Henson’s pedigree could deliver.  What I wanted was rowdy and raunchy.  What I got was uncreative and unfunny.

The soft-boiled plot follows hard-boiled puppet Phil Philips, a disgraced detective currently slumming it as a gumshoe on the seedy side of Los Angeles.  Here, humans don’t coexist with puppets so much as merely tolerate them.  “Meat sacks” still find their fur and felt counterparts entertaining enough that 1990s sitcom “The Happytime Gang” achieved popularity equivalent to “Seinfeld.”  Cast members have since hit hard times however, and those times are getting harder now that an unknown assassin has targeted each fallen star for execution.

Phil curiously has several connections to the case.  When it seems like the murder mystery can’t get any more weirdly personal for the grimly gruff P.I., Phil becomes begrudgingly compelled to team with the irascible human who helped forcibly retire him from the LAPD: his former partner Detective Edwards.

Pairing a noir narrative with a bickering buddy conceit should dress the stage handily for antics, action, even intrigue.  On paper, burnout puppets overdosing on prostitution, pornography, and cocaine sugar snorted through Twizzler straws lays down a uniquely cheeky concept for comedy.  The production itself overdoses on talented actors and puppeteers comprising its cast.

Everyone, audience included, gets let down by an interminably terrible screenplay.  “The Happytime Murders” presumptuously thinks its novelty factor can sustain a full feature film, yet there isn’t remotely enough quality content to keep it from consistently scraping the ground.

There’s no use shaming the writers by name.  For one thing, it isn’t entirely clear how to distribute blame.  Two people receive formal writing credit, presumably according to WGA guidelines, though trade papers have repeatedly mentioned two additional writers for various drafts and cited producer/star Melissa McCarthy for additional contributions.

Also, there’s no reason to believe that what made it to the screen came from a singular source.  Mainly because if it did, I can’t conceivably fathom what attracted anyone to this shooting script aside from the basic premise of puppets behaving badly, which sounds inherently funny in theory.  At the very least, numerous agents should have received angry phone calls as soon as the final cut had its first screening.

Here you have skilled sketch and stand-up comics ranging from top-billed stars like Joel McHale and Elizabeth Banks all the way down to supporting performances from Fortune Feimster and “MADtv’s” Michael McDonald.  Bizarrely, almost everyone portrays a plain person with only the briefest flash of personality.  McHale’s FBI agent is unremarkable to the point of being nearly unnecessary.  McDonald’s shyster producer could only be flatter if his monotone got somehow quieter.  Actors appear completely bored at best and thoroughly confused why they are even involved at worst.

Melissa McCarthy and Maya Rudolph wring a little desperate dampness from largely dry sponges of attempted silliness.  McCarthy appears to improvise in several scenes, with some of her trademark off-the-cuff guff registering a couple of quick smirks.  On the whole, the filmmakers evidently didn’t allot enough takes to wait out more happenstance ha-has capable of earning true chuckles.  They seem to hope serendipity will craft comedy out of thin air, as the writing that made it into the movie isn’t interested in architecting anything other than a flimsy foundation for poop and promiscuity jokes.

It’s like someone only made sure to complete a checklist of “what would be shocking for a puppet to say or do” nonsense, e.g. masturbating, swearing, drinking, smoking, gambling, water sports, and oral sex, instead of constructing a solid story to motivate comedic moments through substance.  Such setups could be hilarious when worked integrally into a screenplay that doesn’t simply employ them independently as irrelevant one-offs.  In circumstances like these, where bare minimum fiction connects a strictly linear path to the fastest finish possible, juvenile humor can’t help but ring hollow.

Silly string standing in for puppet ejaculate works great as a casual visual.  Too bad the movie makes it the centerpiece of a 45-second sequence, which is 42 seconds longer than the gag needs.  After “Never Gonna Give You Up,” “That’s What Friends Are For,” and “Call Me Maybe,” I lost track of how many goofs rely on momentary music cues, which is not at all indicative of clever comedy.  “The Happytime Murders” constantly swings exclusively at the lowest hanging fruit, yet consistently comes up with misses anyway.

Overall emptiness probably explains why multiple stars dropped in and then dropped out during the film’s decade of development.  Dating back to the first formal announcement in 2008, Cameron Diaz, Katherine Heigl, and Jamie Foxx are just the publicly known names who reconsidered possible appearances before wisely moving on.  Rights changed hands and revisions took place several times over that period too.  A conceptually compelling kernel obviously existed somewhere in this quicksand, but the end product never found a way to satisfyingly pop its potential.

I can count the times I smiled on a three-fingered puppet hand.  Rabbit Mr. Bumblypants pooping plastic Easter eggs, inbred desert twins shrieking into a mirror, and “pilafing,” although I was so desperate for any meager laugh by that point, I’m stretching to count that last one.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone made king-sized careers out of applying media commonly associated with children to scat humor and satire.  They did so by continually coming up with 20+ minutes of impudently mirthful material on a weekly basis.  “The Happytime Murders” cannot conjure 90 seconds worth of laughs even though it had ten years to bake a 90-minute movie.  That’s proof positive of a lamely dull misfire.

There’s a smart way to approach a lowbrow lampoon, and “The Happytime Murders” doesn’t know where that route lies.  I went in eagerly anticipating a crassly taboo take on puppet preconceptions and came out badly wanting the movie to be better than it is.  Should you choose to cruise into its black hole of humor, you’ll come out with the same wish.

Review Score:  40

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