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The Happytime Murders
Brian Henson, son of the legendary Jim Henson and the creative force behind the Muppet versions of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island tries for something more original with 2018's The Happytime Murders a film that worked a lot better when it was called Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
This film is set in a world where human beings and puppets co-exist but puppets are considered second class citizens. When the cast members of an old puppet television show called "The Happytime Gang" begin getting bumped off one by one, a former cop who is now a private eye (and a puppet) named Phil Phillips (voiced by Bill Barretta) stumbles onto the murder scene and finds his former human partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) and when it turns out that someone is trying frame Phil for these murders, he and Connie decide to team up in order to clear Phil's name.
It's hard to tell exactly what Henson was attempting to do here. The film's setting is contemporary, but Todd Berger's screenplay has a very 1940's noir-ish sensibility to it. You can almost hear the lone saxophone wailing in the background of a couple of scenes. But this story seems to be trying be hip and relevant, pointing out the jets and Sharks-type war going on between the humans and the puppets. The canvas is laid out in the opening scenes and firmly established with the central characters who are human and puppet, but they're both spouting dialogue that sounds like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie.
There are selected laughs provided mostly through Henson's merciless treatment of the puppets that symbolically breaks the 4th wall...we see button eyes get pulled off some puppets and when one puppet is murdered and found in the ocean, the CSI unit actually twist him up like a dishrag and wring him dry. There is also a very funny scene where McCarthy's Connie gets suspended and she storms through the office telling everyone in the squadroom off. This scene features a cameo by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone and I wish the rest of the movie had been as funny as this scene was.
McCarthy works very hard at creating viable relationships with puppets and there are some good bits contributed along the way by Maya Rudolph as Phil's secretary and Joel McHale as McCarthy's boss, but this attempt to have Who Framed Roger Rabbit? lightening strike twice, never really catches on.
Brian Henson, son of the legendary Jim Henson and the creative force behind the Muppet versions of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island tries for something more original with 2018's The Happytime Murders a film that worked a lot better when it was called Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
This film is set in a world where human beings and puppets co-exist but puppets are considered second class citizens. When the cast members of an old puppet television show called "The Happytime Gang" begin getting bumped off one by one, a former cop who is now a private eye (and a puppet) named Phil Phillips (voiced by Bill Barretta) stumbles onto the murder scene and finds his former human partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) and when it turns out that someone is trying frame Phil for these murders, he and Connie decide to team up in order to clear Phil's name.
It's hard to tell exactly what Henson was attempting to do here. The film's setting is contemporary, but Todd Berger's screenplay has a very 1940's noir-ish sensibility to it. You can almost hear the lone saxophone wailing in the background of a couple of scenes. But this story seems to be trying be hip and relevant, pointing out the jets and Sharks-type war going on between the humans and the puppets. The canvas is laid out in the opening scenes and firmly established with the central characters who are human and puppet, but they're both spouting dialogue that sounds like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie.
There are selected laughs provided mostly through Henson's merciless treatment of the puppets that symbolically breaks the 4th wall...we see button eyes get pulled off some puppets and when one puppet is murdered and found in the ocean, the CSI unit actually twist him up like a dishrag and wring him dry. There is also a very funny scene where McCarthy's Connie gets suspended and she storms through the office telling everyone in the squadroom off. This scene features a cameo by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone and I wish the rest of the movie had been as funny as this scene was.
McCarthy works very hard at creating viable relationships with puppets and there are some good bits contributed along the way by Maya Rudolph as Phil's secretary and Joel McHale as McCarthy's boss, but this attempt to have Who Framed Roger Rabbit? lightening strike twice, never really catches on.