The Happytime Murders

An almost astonishingly misbegotten endeavor, The Happytime Murders follows puppet private eye Phil Philips (Bill Barretta) as he and a human detective (Melissa McCarthy’s Connie Edwards reluctantly team up to solve a series of killings. It’s a decent premise that’s employed to consistently (and increasingly) unwatchable effect by filmmaker Brian Henson, as the director, working from a patchwork script by Todd Berger, delivers a laugh-free, erratically-paced disaster that’s rarely (if ever) as fun as intended – with the Henson’s scattershot approach paving the way for an almost episodic midsection that misses far more often than it hits. And while the novelty of the setup carries it in the short term – the concept of puppets and humans coexisting within a seedy landscape is inherently promising, for sure – The Happytime Murders‘ continuing emphasis on an investigation that couldn’t possibly be more tedious triggers its slow-but-steady descent into total irrelevance (ie the hard-boiled shtick grows old awfully quickly). Henson’s efforts at compensating for the pervasively stale atmosphere fall hopelessly flat and, worse, smack of utter desperation, as the picture’s been suffused with jokes and cameo appearances that, although designed to cultivate and perpetuate a fun, irreverent feel, are ultimately as misguided and unfunny as everything else within the proceedings. The end result is a fairly disappointing trainwreck that could (and should) have been so much better, and it’s certainly impossible not to wonder what drew McCarthy and her talented costars to such an ill-conceived screenplay in the first place.

*1/2 out of ****