China, United States · 2018
Rated R · 1h 31m
Director Brian Henson
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Bill Barretta, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale
Genre Action, Comedy, Crime
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In a world where human beings and puppets live together, when the members of the cast of a children's television show aired during the 1990s begin to get murdered one by one, puppet Phil Philips, a former LAPD detective who fell in disgrace and turned into a private eye, takes on the case at the request of his old boss in order to assist detective Edwards, who was his partner in the past.
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
Some viewers, perhaps, might be shocked at the association of Mr. Rainbow Connection with scenes set in porno shops, strip clubs, and drug dens. What jolted me, though, was seeing the Henson name all over a project that’s so often bland and listless, so tame in its designs, so limited in its imagination, so joyless in its execution.
The one-joke nature of this adults-only spoof wears out the film’s welcome, even if director Brian Henson and his talented crew never let us see the strings.
It should come as no surprise that “Happytime” comes up farcically short as a metaphor for racism. But its most fatal miscalculation is the decision to frontload so many of its crassest setpieces into the first 15 or 20 minutes, depriving the rest of the film of the shock value that is its entire raison d’etre.
The Guardian by Charles Bramesco
As with all overwhelmingly poor movies, it’s the delicate confluence of many varied factors that creates the critic’s familiar feeling of despairing hopelessness in the cinema.
Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty
There are a few spiky moments of sick, WTF fun (a bout of rough sex that ends with a Silly String climax; the first time a puppet drops an F-bomb), but mostly it feels like a promising idea poorly executed.
If The Happytime Murders isn’t the worst movie of the summer, I tremble at the thought of whatever’s coming out next week.
The film aims only to shock, refusing to deliver anything in an intriguingly post-ironic way in the process.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
It's more than funny enough, packing lots of genuine, if frequently tasteless, laughs into its relatively brief running time
Not a single bit lands in The Happytime Murders.
The Happytime Murders may not be a timeless classic on par with Roger Rabbit, but it’s more interesting and nuanced than its raunchy, violent humor suggests. The puppeteering is fantastic, the characters are interesting, and although the story isn’t ingenious the jokes are usually funny.
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