Critics Don't Love 'The Happytime Murders'
by EG
The Happytime Murders attempts to shock audiences into laughing with its profane puppets, but most critics are having a less-than-impressed reaction to the movie. Read on for details.
Brian Henson — son of Muppets creator Jim — is trying to break new ground with his new movie, The Happytime Murders. It's a comedy noir that shows the seedy underbelly of the puppet world, a gimmick that’s been tried before in projects like Avenue Q, but do Henson and a cast including Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Elizabeth Banks and Joel McHale find a way to keep it fresh? Now that the reviews are out, potential audiences can find out for themselves what the critics think of the film centering on a puppet private investigator named Phil (Bill Barretta).
In what might be the most positive of all the reviews, The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck describes the film as “more than funny enough, packing lots of genuine, if frequently tasteless, laughs into its relatively brief running time. He adds, “The Happytime Murders is hardly sophisticated comic entertainment. It's coarse, crude and vulgar and threatens to wear out its welcome despite its brevity. But if you don't find it uproariously funny at times, you must be made of cloth.”
As it turned out, a lot of other critics disagree. Even The New York Times’ A.O. Scott, who admits to finding the feature worthwhile overall, writes that star McCarthy “and the other non-inanimate actors — mainly Ms. Banks, Maya Rudolph and Leslie David Baker — get to do a bit of silly riffing, but it’s mostly tired, bloodless stuff. He adds, “The plot should be an excuse for comic invention, but it mostly just gets in the way, which makes me think that a feature film isn’t really what Phil and his ilk need or deserve. Like their mainstream Muppet brethren, they might be more at home on smaller screeners, in shorter bits. No disrespect.”
So, what is the problem? Todd Gilchrist of Nerdist has a theory. “Irrespective of the fact that Peter Jackson paid satirical tribute to Jim Henson almost 30 years ago with his misanthropic cult film Meet the Feebles, Brian’s puppets smoke and swear and have sex and do drugs, but so much of it seems driven by the urge to shock rather than tell a story,” he suggests. “Ultimately, The Happytime Murders feels like half of two good ideas that don’t add up to a whole, undermining the core of a world that’s genuinely interesting by focusing too heavily on its fuzzy, raunchy edges.”
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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